


For Ever So Long

by Hajinnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Human/Vampire Relationship, Immortality, Loneliness, M/M, Mansion Fic, Supernatural Elements, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-04 09:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hajinnie/pseuds/Hajinnie
Summary: Chanyeol is a centuries-old vampire who went into a deep slumber in an abandoned mansion. Many years later, a family moves into the mansion, disrupting his slumber. Chanyeol is annoyed by the new family's intrusion and tries to make them leave. Instead, Chanyeol ends up befriending the family's middle child, Kyungsoo, in an odd but endearing companionship that transcends their differences.





	1. Forever is a long time

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for ages and I've decided to go ahead and write it. This fic will be shorter than most of my completed fics since I'm writing this as an in-between for a longer fic.
> 
> \--
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hajinnie)  
> [CC](https://curiouscat.me/hajinnie)

 

Mankind has always feared and shunned the unknown for as long as history could record. In a way, it was this fear and precaution that protected mankind and ensured its survival until today.

But it was also this same fear that drove away those who didn’t particularly fall within the scope of “mankind”.

One of the kinds of beings that fell outside the scope that made up “mankind” was vampires.

 

Chanyeol is and has been a vampire for hundreds upon hundreds of years, for as long as he could remember.

In fact, he had been around for so long that he even forgot if he always had been a vampire or if he too was human before that.

If Chanyeol had a hometown once, he had forgotten it now. And if he had friends and a family once, they were surely long dead now. In fact, he couldn’t quite remember if Chanyeol was really his name or just some name he adopted along the way.

 

 

 

Chanyeol’s oldest memory was from less than two hundred years ago, although he was sure that he had been around twice longer than that. He just didn’t remember anything earlier than that.

Chanyeol rarely ever met other vampires and they all seemed to be like him too. Vampires were either forgetful, lived too long to remember too many things or they just had no one to remind them of things.

It was easy to lose track of time when all one did was hide away, alone, in a dark place out of reach from everyone else.

 

It was not like vampires were all antisocial and voluntarily chose to isolate themselves from society. Sure, there were a few antisocial ones who actually enjoyed being alone.

But it wasn’t their choice alone that forced themselves to hide away; it was the humans’ decision that made them so. 

 

 

 

In Chanyeol’s oldest memory, it was probably sometime around the middle 19th century because he still remembered the era he lived in; that was now gone and only a part of history.  

Chanyeol just himself was older than that era but he just didn’t remember the details. He just knew.

 

Chanyeol only lived in large cities, moving around every decade or so, maybe earlier if the humans were beginning to grow suspicious of him.

It was easier to live in densely populated places because there were a lot of people, people didn’t know each other as well as in small towns and he wouldn’t stand out too much for all the wrong reasons.

 

On the rare occasion that Chanyeol stumbled upon a human suffering on their deathbed, Chanyeol would drink their blood and drain them completely, hastening their already imminent deaths.

It was a mutually beneficial act. Chanyeol would be ending the human’s suffering when they were surely going to die, and all the blood from an adult human was enough to keep a vampire full for up to a decade.

Being alive too long without anything to do and not having to feed often did get boring though. Especially when Chanyeol noticed that humans spent a lot of time on meals a day, even making meal time a bonding and socializing event with others.

 

 

There was a time when Chanyeol actually envied how humans banded together and formed groups and a community with each other in order to survive.

Unlike human beings who were naturally social beings, vampires were solitary beings.

 

Chanyeol couldn’t say that he didn’t try because he did and maybe there was a reason why nature dictated that vampires should be solitary beings, after all.

 

 

 

Try as he may befriend the humans, Chanyeol would never be more than the wolf in sheep’s clothing, despite his good intentions.

In a series of events that culminated whereby some humans eventually found out about him being a vampire, Chanyeol ended up being persecuted for who he was as a being.

 

Chanyeol was chased out from the town he had called home and attempts on his life were made too, all so the humans could feel safe because of how they had perceived Chanyeol as a threat to humanity.

Sure, there were vampires who killed humans by drinking blood more than necessary, for the purpose of pleasure and not to sate a hunger. But Chanyeol was not one of those vampires.

It was hard to change what the human’s believed though. Chanyeol couldn’t blame them either for wanting to eliminate what they deemed as a threat to their lives. It was every being’s natural instinct to act as so.

 

 

 

After Chanyeol was forced to leave the town, he remembered traveling through the expanse of mountains, forests and barren plains in the height of the snowy winter.

Chanyeol traveled during the night and rested in the morning in caves, under rocks and beneath the roots of massive trees that were bare in the coldest season.

While Chanyeol would not vaporize or simply die under the sun like the tales of vampire told them to be, sunlight did severely weaken vampires and they would die under prolonged exposure.

 

It would be a few more years until Chanyeol got hungry again. He had no destination in mind but he was keen on finding someplace to settle for a bit before the winter ended; when the days would get longer than the nights and the sun would shine intensely.

If there was one thing that worked for Chanyeol, it was that he managed to find someplace before that year’s winter ended.

 

 

 

The place Chanyeol found was an abandoned mansion on a country estate that presumably used to belong to someone rich, powerful and long dead.

The mansion was way beyond inhabitable for a human and the knowledge comforted Chanyeol that he would be undisturbed while he remained there.

The estate itself was isolated and a ways bit from the nearest town, making it the perfect place for Chanyeol.

 

Some lore about vampire was true, as some weren’t. One of those that wasn’t true was the myth that vampires needed an invitation before entering a place.

Chanyeol was grateful for this because he soon made this abandoned mansion his new home.

 

 

 

Vampires are able to hibernate and they can do so for up to hundreds of years without having to wake up to feed on blood.

Usually, a vampire would go into hibernation when they are at risk of danger and persecution by the humans, or if they are unable to find blood sources to sustain themselves for a long time.

This way, it would allow time to pass naturally until it was safe or secure enough for the said vampire to emerge from their hibernation.

 

 

Thus, Chanyeol decided it was best that he too went into an indefinite hibernation at the time.

Not only did Chanyeol actually feel threatened for his life, but he also felt utterly disappointed at himself after being chased and hunted from the last town he settled in.

Chanyeol was devastated because he wanted to be the proof that maybe vampires and humans could get along. But all he ever did was proving himself wrong.

 

 

Early in the morning that same winter, Chanyeol gazed from a window that was almost falling out from its hinges, at the falling snow that blanketed the entire mansion’s compound with its white color.

At the same time, a chilling draft blew into the attic from the holes in the ceiling and walls of the dilapidated mansions. But Chanyeol was no human and he wasn’t able to feel the cold.

 

That would be the last view that Chanyeol saw before locking himself in a long empty chest he found in the attic, where he went into hibernation and continued to do so for many more winters.

If Chanyeol could will it, he would choose to sleep forever. He was no immortal being but he was too invincible to kill himself either.

This was the closest thing he could get to death without dying if that was even a word for his kind.

 

With a slight sliver of hope, Chanyeol hoped that the world would be a different place when he awoke from his hibernation.

 

 

 

 

Since then, a long time had passed. In fact, it was such a long time that an entire generation of humans was born, grew old and died during the time Chanyeol was in hibernation.

And when the subsequent new generation was born and grew old enough to have children of their own, it was only then that Chanyeol awoke from his hibernation- unintentionally.

 

Chanyeol had a good few more decades or so before his body would go hungry and needed blood to drink.

There was no need to wake up now and Chanyeol wasn’t the best judge to determine if the current era was a suitable one for a vampire like himself too.  


 

 

What awoken Chanyeol from his hibernation after all these years were the loud sounds of apparent hammering and knocking, going on in the mansion in the floors below the attic.

For a long time, Chanyeol had been undisturbed in his slumber until that happened. For the first time in many years, there actually was or were humans who were daring enough to cross into the grounds and make their way into the mansion.

Worse still, these humans were not only repairing and remodeling the mansion, but they were also planning to move in and inhabit the place.

Chanyeol considered himself lucky still though because the humans weren’t able to find the passage to the attic and had yet to learn of the attic’s existence.

 

 

When Chanyeol woke up for the first time in so long, it was night time and the season was summer. Chanyeol had lost track of time and he had no idea how long it had been since he begun hibernating.

Chanyeol eventually found a newspaper lying around, left behind by the repairmen who only came around to work on the mansion during the day.

It hadn’t been long enough for the regional language to drastically evolve and become unintelligible to Chanyeol. Newspapers already existed at that time and although they read and looked slightly differently now, Chanyeol felt an oddly comforting feeling that he wasn’t too far off left behind.

 

 

If Chanyeol remembered the dates correctly with his bad vampire memory, it would have been almost a century-and-a-half since his hibernation.

It had been long enough that Chanyeol was only left with fuzzy and blurred memories of how he got to the mansion and why he was there in the first place.

Chanyeol only remembered how he felt at that time and why he did what he did, but not of the exact events that led him to where he was at currently.

 

However, all of that didn’t matter now. Chanyeol had other pressing issues to solve; which was to drive out the human family that had moved into the mansion and disrupted his long slumber.

Chanyeol was certainly sure that he did not want to share the mansion with this new family, especially a human one.

 

 

 

Chanyeol watched the new family from afar; from the shadows, from some of the rooms that were left empty and from the dark long corridors of the mansion that were left unlit.

Chanyeol was careful and extremely vigilant about their movements, making sure that they did not learn of his existence all while he plotted to make them leave somehow.

Chanyeol wasn’t sure about the economy in the present day but if things hadn’t changed that much since then, Chanyeol could guess that the family that had moved into the mansion had to be rich, influential or powerful to be able to live there.

 

 

From his lurking and observations at a distance, Chanyeol counted five members of the family.

Several people would come in a few times a week to clean and fix up the place, whom Chanyeol guessed to be servants. But the servants did not stay at the mansion and they would leave before the evening, leaving only the members of the family behind.

 

Chanyeol assumed the older looking man and woman to be the mother and father of the family, and that the three younger ones were their children.

The oldest child was a boy, appearing to be slightly younger than the physical appearance that Chanyeol was stuck and frozen with. 

The middle child was also a boy, appearing to be a few years younger than his older brother.

The youngest child was a girl, no older than six or seven years old from the looks of it.

 

 

 

When fall arrived, the oldest child was seen packing some bags and leaving the house to what Chanyeol overheard as “university”. Chanyeol took note of it that universities still existed in the current day and age.

During the day, the mother and father would leave with the youngest child, only to return for the day in the evening and sometimes at night.

For the sake of discovering this fact and monitoring the family’s movements, Chanyeol spent the mornings awake despite the nocturnal nature of a vampire. Then again, Chanyeol had been asleep for hundreds of years. He already had all the time to be sleeping and now was not it.

 

 

Hence, Chanyeol found out that during the morning on days when the servants didn’t come around to clean up the mansion, the middle child would be left home all alone in such a vast residence.

Seeing this, Chanyeol thought up of an opportunity to begin his plan to drive out the family; a plan which didn’t include anyone getting hurt.

Chanyeol would try to scare off this middle child up to the point where he convinces his family to move out of the mansion.

 

Sure, humans have inconvenienced him for all of his vampire existence and Chanyeol could probably try to get back at them for all the suffering he and his fellow vampires have been through.

But Chanyeol still believed of being the bigger person even if it meant receiving the shorter end of the stick. That was just who he was.

 

 

 

Chanyeol’s plan began on a Monday morning; which was a day when the servants wouldn’t come around, and when the parents would be gone from the house with the younger child until the evening. Hence, the middle child would be left home all alone during this time.

Chanyeol had been observing this middle child longer and more intently than he had been watching the other members of the family.

 

This middle child had a lock of short dark hair with eyes of matching color. He didn’t look too different from his family members and Chanyeol learned that his name was “Kyungsoo”, as he was called so by his parents and siblings.

During the day when Kyungsoo was left at home alone, he would spend a good amount of time in his room studying and reading books.

In the afternoon, Kyungsoo would come down to the kitchen and make himself some food, then watch some things that Chanyeol described to be “moving pictures with sounds from a rectangle box”. Chanyeol had not yet learned what that thing was but the sounds from it certainly did surprise him the first time he discovered about it. 

Chanyeol almost blew his cover then, because he was hiding in a cupboard while stalking the family when they were watching the moving pictures in the box. Chanyeol was startled by the sudden sounds from the box and had jumped back, knocking himself back on the wooden boards that made up the cupboard.

Chanyeol was sure that the family overheard the sounds he made but they laughed it off and dismissed it as the sounds coming from the box they called a “TV”.

Not that Chanyeol was sure what a “TV” meant. There were too many boxes with too many names now that came in varying sizes with lots of moving pictures and sounds coming from it.

 

 

Chanyeol waited until Kyungsoo left his room on Monday afternoon to attempt “scaring off” the teenager.

The moment Kyungsoo exited his room and was starting to head down the corridor to go to the kitchen, as usual, Chanyeol came out from behind a corner in the corridor where he was hiding.

Chanyeol certainly surprised Kyungsoo by suddenly lurching out from his hiding position.

Kyungsoo shrieked and lost his balance, falling down backward and landing on the carpeted floor on his butt. Kyungsoo attempted to lift himself back up but only ended up falling back down to the floor, his legs quivering and unable to get back up.

This would go on for another few more minutes until the point where Chanyeol himself was becoming unamused. Despite that, Kyungsoo still persisted and failed to get himself up from the floor.

 

 

“W-Who are you? Are you a r-robber? Take everything you want but don’t hurt my family, please” Kyungsoo stammered, still on the floor and covering half of his face with an elbow in a defensive stance.

Chanyeol sighed with arms on his waist and began remarking with snark, “This is pathetic. Why aren’t you running away? I am a scary unknown man inside your house. Goodness knows what I would do to you? Now go off and scram, you dimwit.”

Kyungsoo paused, stopping his cries and pleas once he heard Chanyeol speak for some reason. Slowly and timidly, Kyungsoo removed the elbow he had placed in front of his face so he could look up clearly at Chanyeol hovering above him.

 

“Eh?” Kyungsoo reacted, once he had a good clear look at Chanyeol for the first time.

“What are you ‘eh’-ing for? Go off now. Shoo,” Chanyeol waved his hands in front of him, in a sort of attempt to get Kyungsoo to leave.

“Who are you, really?” Kyungsoo asked, slightly relaxing a little and feeling less tense than earlier on for some reasons.

“I’m a big scary man who has been stalking you and your family for months now within this mansion. Isn’t that enough to make you frightened and leave?” Chanyeol himself was feeling rather odd about how the events had unfolded.

“No, I meant like _who are you_?” Kyungsoo emphasized on the question, “You’re dressed like you came from the last century, certainly not like a robber would and you don’t even seem like you want to steal anything or hurt anyone.”

“That’s none of your concern, now will you please get out?” Chanyeol pointed to the staircase that led down to the first floor of the mansion, and hence the exit.

“-but I live here? Why would I leave? Where do you want me to go?” Kyungsoo was confused.

“This place belongs to me and has been for over a hundred years. You and your family merely intruded on my property. I am the rightful owner of this property, so I will ask you kindly one more time to see yourself off my asset.” Chanyeol firmly instructed.

Kyungsoo squinted his eyes due to his slight short-sightedness, observing Chanyeol, “But my family’s name is on the deed to this place. It clearly belongs to us and who even wears that in 2018?”

 

Chanyeol rolled his eyes and sighed even deeply, visibly annoyed, “Why aren’t you scared of me!?”

“Why would I be? You’re more interesting than you are scary.” Kyungsoo replied, slowly trying to get back up on his feet but finding himself unable to do so. Kyungsoo resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t able to do that at the moment, and sat back down on the carpet, straining his neck to look up at Chanyeol towering above him.

Kyungsoo then continued, “-so, judging based off what you told me that you’ve owned this place for hundreds of years, I take it that you have lived that long too? You don’t look a day over twenty-five to me though.”

Chanyeol’s mouth hung open in astonishment at Kyungsoo’s reactions, “Are all humans this weird now?”

Kyungsoo seemed amazed at what Chanyeol told him, his face lighting up and going, “Aha! You just made a generalization towards humans. The tone of your speech suggests that you are commenting as an outside observer towards humans being, suggesting that you are not human yourself. Wow! What are you?”

“Okay, time to go back to sleep for another hundred years. I’ll come back when you’re long dead,” Chanyeol gave up, feeling defeated by a human boy.

 

Chanyeol turned on his heel, ready to leave and return to the attic when he was halted by Kyungsoo latching onto his calf.

“Don’t go yet, please,” Kyungsoo begged, grabbing Chanyeol on the calf.

“What is it now?” Chanyeol retorted, annoyed.

“Please tell me who you are first before you go?” Kyungsoo pleaded.

“-and how does that interest you?” Chanyeol shot back, looking over his shoulder at Kyungsoo behind him and latching onto him.

“Well…,” Kyungsoo trailed off before continuing, “-I rarely get to go outside and meet new people. I don’t have friends and my family is usually busy with their own thing. On top of that, you seem different than other people so I would like to know, please.”

“How did you come to the conclusion that I am different when you barely meet other people to recognize a difference, just like you stated?” Chanyeol verbally challenged Kyungsoo.

“I just know,” Kyungsoo nodded, confident in his answer.

Chanyeol sighed, yet again, reluctantly answering Kyungsoo’s question just to get the human off his case, “I am a vampire. There, are you satisfied now? Now go rally your townsfolk and bring your torches and pitchforks to drive me out of the town.”

“Why would I do that but wow! You’re a vampire! That’s so cool!” Kyungsoo’s face immediately lit up, looking as much eager as he was excited.

“Cool?” Chanyeol looked puzzled, clearly not understanding the modern slang for the word he thought to mean for cold.

“It means something like amazing or awesome,” Kyungsoo explained.

 

 

Kyungsoo unlatched himself from Chanyeol’s calf and tried yet again to get himself back on his feet, albeit struggling and finding it quite difficult to do so.

Chanyeol was fed up of seeing Kyungsoo repeatedly trying to do this and failing at it. To Chanyeol, it was pathetic and he hated to see someone struggle so much.

Which led to Chanyeol helping Kyungsoo out, making sure Kyungsoo was properly stood up and properly balanced on his feet before letting the latter go.

 

“So can you do cool stuff like shapeshift into a bat? Oh, you can't cross over running water too, can't you?” Kyungsoo eagerly asked, a joy displayed in his bright eyes.

“What!? No!” Chanyeol was stunned to hear what the human’s current perception of vampires was.

“Nice,” Kyungsoo responded, still clearly interested in Chanyeol, “So, how old are you?”

Chanyeol shrugged, “I forgot but I think I’m over three hundred years old.”

Kyungsoo nodded, absorbing all the information he was hearing.

 

Chanyeol then had a sudden moment of realization and grunted, “Why am I even talking to you and entertaining your questions?” I’m leaving.”

“Wait, wait,” Kyungsoo held onto Chanyeol’s arm this time, stopping the vampire from leaving yet again, “I’m Kyungsoo. What is your name?”

“Just call me Chanyeol,” Chanyeol half-heartedly replied, noticing how Kyungsoo’s legs were quivering and how he had trouble standing back up after falling, “What is wrong with your legs?”

“Oh, that,” Kyungsoo’s face dropped, looking down towards his legs beneath his waist, “I was born sick with a heart disease and I was pretty developmentally slow. My body has always been weak, especially my legs. That’s why I stay home most of the time.”

“You shouldn’t be walking around too much then,” Chanyeol advised, slightly feeling bad for Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo smiled wide yet again, “Wow, you’re so nice.”

 

 

While Kyungsoo was fascinated at meeting someone so interesting and so out of this world, at least from the way he saw things; Chanyeol was actually surprised that there was a human that actually had a positive reaction after knowing his true nature as a vampire.

 

 

After that encounter, Chanyeol managed to shake off Kyungsoo and return to the attic. Kyungsoo tried chasing after Chanyeol but he was far too weak and slow to catch up with Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo didn’t know where Chanyeol went off to, thus making Chanyeol’s hideout in the attic to remain secure and unknown to the humans.  

 

 

Chanyeol did not further attempt to stalk Kyungsoo or his family for a while after that. Chanyeol merely laid down in the chest in the attic, staring up at the aging ceiling as he contemplated his life thus far.

For a few days after that, Chanyeol was fearful that a mob of angry townsfolk would come barging into the mansion and ransacking it to look for him because they had heard from Kyungsoo about a vampire lurking somewhere in the mansion.

Chanyeol wasn’t able to sleep out of the anxiety, or it was because he had been asleep for so long prior to that.

But no one came for Chanyeol and everything seemed to be as normal, with the family still inhabiting his mansion.

 

 

 

On a Monday morning, a full week since the first encounter between Chanyeol and Kyungsoo; Chanyeol waited for Kyungsoo’s parents and the younger sister to leave before he came out of the attic.

Chanyeol’s intentions were merely just to see what Kyungsoo was up to, after having spent the entire week contemplating the decision apart from being scared of being persecuted yet again.

Hiding in some rafters, Chanyeol was certainly amused to see Kyungsoo walking around the mansion; albeit slowly and guiding himself by the walls and railings, looking and shouting out loud for Chanyeol to come out from wherever he was.

 

Seeing this, Chanyeol chuckled and caught himself smiling for the first time in hundreds of years within the dark rafters. Chanyeol froze and immediately cupped a hand on his face, slightly taken aback at his unprecedented reaction.

Vampires weren’t void of emotions but it certainly felt odd to feel in such a way, especially when Chanyeol couldn’t even remember the last time he actually felt joy.

 

 

Chanyeol knew that this was dangerous, that this was almost the same events that led to him fleeing to the mansion in the first place.

Getting close to humans has never ended well for vampires.

 

Despite that, Chanyeol still stubbornly descended from the rafters to meet Kyungsoo, much to the human’s delight.

Chanyeol didn’t hope too much but maybe, just maybe, this time it would be different and maybe humans and vampires could actually get along.

 

 


	2. In good company

> ****
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

From then on, Chanyeol would pay visits to Kyungsoo on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; which would be the days whereby Kyungsoo would be left home alone.

Kyungsoo would study by himself in the morning before taking a break in the afternoon, and then continuing to study for a few more hours until his parents and younger sister returned in the evening.

Chanyeol would appear in the morning and leave just then in the evening. Chanyeol would never let Kyungsoo follow him back in the evening, to make sure that his hideout in the attic would remain hidden and unknown.

 

Chanyeol hung around Kyungsoo during this studying time, whether it be in the mansion’s library or in Kyungsoo’s room.

Chanyeol observed Kyungsoo going about his day and Kyungsoo was more than happy enough to let Chanyeol learn and watch.

Despite supposedly being the more mysterious being, Chanyeol did have a lot of questions for Kyungsoo himself.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo was sitting behind his desk in his room with a workbook, writing away with a pen. The lights in his room were turned on during the day because the curtains were shut.

For Chanyeol’s convenience, Kyungsoo had drawn the curtains at the window shut so the sunlight wouldn’t come through.

 

Kyungsoo was slightly surprised to know that vampires didn’t vaporize or immediately combusted into ashes when exposed to sunlight, unlike as they were portrayed in folklore. Kyungsoo did also learn that vampires were weakened by sunlight and that prolonged exposure to it could actually kill them.

Kyungsoo was still more than welcome to accommodate the needs of his new friend.

 

 

“Why don’t you go to school?” Chanyeol asked one morning, during the first few times since Chanyeol begun paying visits to Kyungsoo. Chanyeol was sitting on the window sill with one leg raised onto the sill.

“I’m taking a year off from school before I go back to complete my final year in high school,” Kyungsoo answered, looking up from his book, “That’s why I study the subjects by myself at home so I won’t be too far left behind when I start school again next year.”

“Hmm…” Chanyeol hummed, “-but don’t your siblings go to school as normal? Why don’t you?”

“Oh, that,” Kyungsoo pondered, setting his pen down on the desk and looking up towards Chanyeol at the windowsill, “You see, my family and I aren’t originally from around here. When we moved here, my parents decided that I should take a year off to give me time to adjust to the move before I start school again.”

“Is it because you’re sick, unlike your siblings?” Chanyeol bluntly asked.

“I guess so,” Kyungsoo shrugged.

“I do not know how things work for humans but don’t you visit some doctor or medicine man or some healer if you’re sick so they can help you get better?” Chanyeol pondered, “Then why do you just stay home all day?”

Kyungsoo laughed, cupping his mouth with a palm, “-we just see a doctor now, Chanyeol. No more medicine man or healers.”

“Oh, I see,” Chanyeol nodded, “I guess the job market is a tough competition now.”

“What about you, Chanyeol? Did you go to some sort of school before too? You’ve lived a long time; surely you must have learned something or acquired some skill, have you?” Kyungsoo asked eagerly.

Chanyeol shook his head, explaining, “Even if I did, I would have forgotten everything that I had learned by now. We vampires have bad memories.”

“Why is that?” Kyungsoo asked.

“I’m not sure,” Chanyeol pondered, staring blankly into space, “-it’s just probably the way we are, or that we live too long and move around too much. It gets hard when you’ve lived through too many years and at too many places, where nothing is the same and there’s nothing that gives you a sense of stability and normalcy.”

“So, will you forget about me years from now?” Kyungsoo questioned Chanyeol.

“From the looks of it, maybe,” Chanyeol answered, lifting a hand up to his face, staring at the never-aging state his body was permanently frozen with.

Despite the rather morbid but truthful answer, Kyungsoo was given with, he still smiled, “I guess we’ll have to make whatever time we have to count, shall we?”

 

 

 

On another day, Kyungsoo decided to study and spend the day in the drawing room. Chanyeol tagged along also, as their routine had been for over a week or so.

While Kyungsoo was studying on a couch through online classes on his laptop, Chanyeol squatted on the floor, intrigued at the rectangular box on the wall with moving pictures and sounds.

Kyungsoo had explained to Chanyeol what televisions, computers, tablets, and phones were. Although, Chanyeol still had not gotten used to the technology yet and was very easily impressed by how much content there were available on these “boxes”.

 

While Kyungsoo studied, he had put on an older popular vampire film for Chanyeol to watch.

In the film that Chanyeol was watching, the vampire owned a large castle and even had a title of nobility. The said film vampire had a deformed figure, lusted after a human’s blood, was promiscuous and could also shapeshift into bats.

It was from there that Chanyeol understood how the misconceptions of vampires came about and spread as a false belief among the humans.

 

 

Chanyeol snorted, still squatting on the floor in front of the television when the movie ended and the credits began rolling, “That’s such an inaccurate depiction and portrayal of vampires. First of all, we aren’t rich. It’s almost impossible for vampires to legally own property, lest to say a huge amount of it to warrant a title of nobility. We look the same as humans. We only drink blood to sustain life and not for pleasure. We’re loyal to a partner if we have one and we certainly don’t turn into bats at will. The only thing they got right was the part where humans are afraid of us and often try to kill us. Even in a work of fiction, it seems that the vampire couldn’t have a happy ending either. I’ll give it to that.”

Kyungsoo chuckled hearing Chanyeol’s rant. “Yeah, you really don’t look like or seem like the vampires in the movies.”

Chanyeol whipped his head back to look at Kyungsoo behind him sitting on the couch, “If they still portray vampires as such scary and dangerous beings, then why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Well, you don’t seem like other vampires- not that I’ve known or met vampires before,” Kyungsoo explained, “-you just seem different to me. It’s just a feeling that I have.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” Chanyeol accepted.

 

Kyungsoo closed the lid on his laptop with an audible click sound, before scooting up further down the couch and closer to Chanyeol squatting on the floor.

“Sooo..,” Kyungsoo dragged on the syllable, his tone of voice clearly hinting that he was curious but also hesitant to ask a question.

“What is it?” Chanyeol acknowledged.

Kyungsoo moved from the couch to the floor, joining Chanyeol there. Kyungsoo began asking, “I always wanted to know this but do you have fangs? Like the ones in the vampire movies? How do you drink blood?”  Kyungsoo then began backpedaling, “I’m sorry if I’m intruding too much with that question. You don’t have to answer me at all if you don’t’ want to.”

“I’m good,” Chanyeol assured, before pulling up the corner of his lip to expose his teeth.

“Woah! So vampires have the same teeth structure like humans but it’s just that your canine teeth are sharper and more pronounced,” Kyungsoo noted, very interested and surprised to see Chanyeol’s canine teeth, “-that’s so cool!”

“Sure…cool, I guess,” Chanyeol responded, still a bit unsure at how to use the word “cool” in a sentence structure to make himself more relatable to Kyungsoo.

 

Kyungsoo too tried pulling back his lips to touch his own canine teeth, somehow trying to make a comparison between his and Chanyeol’s.

Seeing this, Chanyeol offered, “Do you want to touch it? Be careful though, it’s sharp.”

Kyungsoo didn’t need a further second to think and jumped on the offer.

 

While Chanyeol held and pulled his lips open, looking rather comical at it; Kyungsoo tapped and poked on Chanyeol’s fangs with a finger.

Kyungsoo heeded Chanyeol’s warning and made sure he didn’t touch the sharp tip of the fang.

 

It was certainly a sight to see a vampire squatting on the floor, holding his lips apart so a teenager could pique his curiosity regarding a vampire’s teeth.

But Chanyeol was more than happy to do so for his newly found human friend. It was nothing big or revolutionary but Chanyeol hoped that this even in the smallest bit would help bridge the gap between vampires and humans.

 

 

Once Kyungsoo was done admiring and gawking in the fascination that was Chanyeol’s teeth, Kyungsoo pulled away, sitting down on the carpeted floor with Chanyeol.

“You have sharp fangs so you can drink blood, am I right?” Kyungsoo questioned, being very curious.

Chanyeol too sat back down on the carpeted floor, instead of squatting as he had been earlier along. Chanyeol pulled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them before he answered, “Yes, that’s what it’s for.”

Based on past experiences, Chanyeol was already beginning to dread the follow-up questions that would come after this, especially when it was asked to him by a human none the least.

“So what kind of blood do you drink?” Kyungsoo continued to ask.

“We can only drink human’s blood,” Chanyeol answered, bluntly. There was no point in sugarcoating it, Chanyeol believed.

“How much do you need to drink? How often do you do it too?” Kyungsoo asked away, unbothered at the response that Chanyeol was giving him.

“A few teaspoons of blood can keep us full for a month at most. A full glass of blood can last a year and an entire adult human’s blood can last vampires up to a decade. If we go into hibernation while we’re full, we can sleep for almost two hundred years without having to drink blood,” Chanyeol explained, actually remembering that amount out of everything else he failed to remember.

Then again, that was probably ingrained into a vampire’s head to know in order to survive.

 

“So…” Kyungsoo dragged on his sentence, rocking back and forth on the floor, “-aren’t you hungry for some blood now?”

“Not really, I’ve been hibernating for over a hundred years so I didn’t have to. But now that I’m awake, I do feel myself getting hungrier by the day.” Chanyeol revealed, pondering the thought that he’d have to feed soon.

“How will you find that blood?” Kyungsoo asked yet again, seemingly not ever going to slow down with his inquiries.

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t been outside in over a hundred years so I don’t know how the outside world is now. Back then, I would find the house of a person who was suffering and dying and drain them of all their blood. It was a mutually beneficial thing. I would end the suffering of a dying human who in turn kept me fed and alive,” Chanyeol informed Kyungsoo.

 

Kyungsoo was silent for a while as he listened to and digested everything it was that Chanyeol had told him.

Chanyeol was beginning to fear the silence from Kyungsoo, as a sign that the human was probably now frightened and too traumatized to talk to him anymore.

“I see,” Kyungsoo nodded in understanding. “I guess that’s how the vampires are in order to survive. That’s fine, Chanyeol. You seem like a nice person from the sounds of it too.”

 “I guess”, Chanyeol shrugged, still not that hopeful but feeling slightly relieved.

“I can help you get some blood if you want,” Kyungsoo suddenly announced, looking brighter than just moments ago.

“-and how do you attempt to go about that?” Chanyeol was the one now asking the questions.

“In this age, people donate blood and the hospitals buy it for their patients. The blood can be bought too. A pint of blood that is donated is about 1/10th of the total blood volume of what an adult human would have. So, going by what you say, it should keep you full for a year,” Kyungsoo was pleased to say, having done the mental math for it already.

Chanyeol’s mouth was slightly hung open as he was now the one in awe, trying to process what Kyungsoo had told him. “You can buy a year’s supply worth of blood now!?” Chanyeol was surprised, to say the least.

“Well,” Kyungsoo prided, feeling quite good about himself, “Not everyone can get it thought but my father is a hospital’s director so it should be a breeze for me. Just let me know when you get hungry though.”

“A breeze?” Chanyeol stared at Kyungsoo, slightly lowering his head in confusion.

“Oh, it’s a saying for something that’s easy and simple to do,” Kyungsoo quickly explained, remembering that his vampire friend still had over a century of slang to catch up with.

Although things were going well so far, they would still have to take things slowly for now it seemed.

 

 

 

It didn’t take long for both Kyungsoo and Chanyeol to start looking forward to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Obviously, because it would be the days when Kyungsoo would be home alone and Chanyeol could come out of the attic to spend time with the latter.

Kyungsoo had bought Chanyeol a digital watch that came with an electronic calendar on the screen, so Chanyeol could tell what time and day it was even while cooped up in the hidden attic.

Kyungsoo had tried teaching Chanyeol how to use a smartphone and how it works, so Chanyeol could text Kyungsoo even while hiding and on days when Chanyeol couldn’t come down to visit. But that didn’t work out well yet. It would be some time until then when Chanyeol was finally caught up with the current world.

For now, it seems that they would have to stick with the traditional face-to-face conversations when they could meet each other.

 

 

Although Chanyeol felt slightly eased up now regarding his relationship with a human, Chanyeol still couldn’t bring it in himself to trust Kyungsoo with the one thing that ensured his safety. And that was his hideout in the attic and how the humans in question still didn’t know it existed.

Kyungsoo, being the inquisitive person, of course, did ask and wonder about this.

 

While Chanyeol was more than happy to answer everything it is that Kyungsoo asked or wanted to know about, the only question that Chanyeol refrained from answering was about the attic.

To Chanyeol, it was his last safe haven from the humans who surely wanted him dead and eradicated if they knew.

Chanyeol had been persecuted and feared by humans all of his life, and the fact that there were more humans in existence now than all of history did fear Chanyeol from even wanting to leave.

Despite being young and arguably naïve, Kyungsoo respected this and never asked Chanyeol further about where the vampire hid in and went to for most of the time.

 

 

It was also Kyungsoo’s aim to get Chanyeol to be slightly more comfortable with the current world. Kyungsoo believed that if Chanyeol knew more of how the world was that he would be less afraid of it and other humans.

For now, Kyungsoo had taught Chanyeol the basics on how to use a mouse to scroll and navigate a computer.

This way, Kyungsoo could pull up documentary websites for Chanyeol to read; especially regarding history and notable world events that had occurred while Chanyeol was in hibernation.

Chanyeol did complain that the light from these “computers” hurt his eyes, considering that he was a vampire and how they were more assimilated to the dark.

 

 

In the end, Kyungsoo ended up printing out all these web pages for Chanyeol to read in print instead, while Kyungsoo would continue with his self-studying. This way, Chanyeol would have something read and spend his time with while he was cooped up in the attic. 

Kyungsoo also made it a point to note how the lore of vampires had become a part of popular culture, showing Chanyeol the impact of it in the entertainment media and how well liked the idea of vampires were among the public.

In a way, Kyungsoo was trying to reassure Chanyeol that he too might be accepted by the current society, despite his less than pleasant experiences when trying to mingle with humans in the past.

 

“They only admire a work of fiction with a less than accurate portrayal of vampires, though,” Chanyeol tried to reason with Kyungsoo.

 “I am aware that you have good intentions by letting me know all of this, but if you say that humans adore vampires now, they only like the idea of it and the ones from the movies. That is still a far cry from what vampires really are,” Chanyeol commented.

Kyungsoo agreed, “Yes you may be right but…well, I can’t speak for everyone else but there is one human here who accepts you as it is. I know I’m not much but I guess it’s something, right?” Kyungsoo happily pointed to himself with his index finger.

Chanyeol smiled, looking up from the tablet that Kyungsoo had handed him to watch some vampire shows with.

“Thank you,” Chanyeol expressed his gratitude, feeling like he could finally genuinely smile again and feel warm again on in the inside, despite having an eternally frozen body with a heart that hasn’t beat in hundreds of years.

 

“So, I’ve been meaning to ask this but do you know any of those famous vampires like Dracula or Nosferatu? Do they really exist?” Kyungsoo asked, hoping he was not being too rude by suddenly changing the overall mood of the earlier conversation that they were having.

“I really have no idea who they are. Even if I did back then, I think that I might have forgotten about them now,” Chanyeol answered, feeling rather confused himself.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo nodded, not even pausing before asking his next question, “Do you know any other vampires than yourself though?”

“I knew a few, I can somewhat remember how they looked like but I don’t think I can remember their names. After all, we are solitary beings but some vampires do find partners, but not many of them do, unlike humans.” Chanyeol clarified.

“Wow, that must be lonely to live all those years alone,” Kyungsoo remarked before quickly backtracking, “-no offense to you though.”

“-its fine, I’m used to it,” Chanyeol softly muttered, pretending to look at the tablet despite the light from it already beginning to strain his eyes. All while he began to recall that he too once tried to live in groups and in a community like the humans, only to fail so badly and ended up in the situation he was today.

 

Not that that was too bad either.

But little that Chanyeol knew that when Kyungsoo remarked about him leading a lonely life, that Kyungsoo was also maybe talking about his own self too.

There were a few things that Chanyeol had yet to learn about this particular human’s life too.

 

 

 

Since becoming friends with Kyungsoo, Chanyeol’s sleeping habits now matched that of a human and not that of a nocturnal vampire. Chanyeol would be awake during the day and asleep at night, which was a sleeping routine he had yet to experience in all his years of existence as a vampire.

Chanyeol was indeed asleep one night when he was awoken by rather loud noises of people talking; seemingly arguing with raised voices.

Chanyeol woke up in a panic, quickly swinging off the lid of his chest open so he could sit upright without banging his head on it. Chanyeol always slept lightly because of his fear that he would be vulnerable and easy to hunt down while he was asleep.

 

Vampires had a better sense of hearing compared to humans, not by much but significant enough to give them the upper hand on an audible scale.

Even from this distance, while Chanyeol was stowed away in his hidden attic hideout, he could clearly hear Kyungsoo’s voice apart from the two voices that were seemingly heated in the shouting match.

Knowing this, Chanyeol certainly had to check and see what was going on.

 

 

Slowly, Chanyeol exited the attic by opening the trapdoor on the attic floor that led to “expanding” stairs that only revealed itself when the trapdoor was opened.

The stairs were old, dusty but still reliable. Chanyeol climbed down those stairs and ended up in the rafters, above the ceiling below the roofing frames where he was already used to being at by now.

Chanyeol followed the voices by ear, treading slowly and carefully so as to not make any unnecessary noises on the ceiling that might alert Kyungsoo’s family of his presence or existence.

 

Chanyeol soon arrived on the ceiling right above the room where he believed Kyungsoo to be at.

Since the slight construction work and repairing done before Kyungsoo’s family moved into the mansion, several small holes had been drilled into the ceiling to accommodate fixtures such as lighting and wiring.

This allowed some amount of light into the rafters and a small peephole for Chanyeol to peek through and see what was going on below, having also being one of the methods Chanyeol employed to watch on Kyungsoo’s family earlier on.

What Chanyeol saw was surely Kyungsoo and Kyungsoo’s father arguing with each other.

 

 

“No, I’m not going! I want to stay here.” Kyungsoo firmly asserted with his voice, seemingly struggling to even stand up, evident by how wobbly his legs were.

“Look, just think about it. You have nine months before you start school anyway. Maybe you’ll change your mind then,” Kyungsoo’s father, a seemingly stern man with graying hair, sighed and lowered his voice in seemingly defeat.

“Why are you always trying to throw me away!? Am I not a part of this family too!?” Kyungsoo shouted.

“How dare you accuse me like that! It’s just a boarding school and for only one year too! Your brother went off to university far away and I didn’t hear him complain! It’s a good school and I had to pull some strings so you can go there next fall!” Kyungsoo’s father voice shot back up, picking up from where he last left off.

“You’re just giving excuses to send me far away. I know you always try to hide me away from everyone, especially your friends and business partners because I’m sick and not as smart as my brother,” Kyungsoo retorted, “I know you’re embarrassed by having such a sick child like me.”

“You’re clearly too young to understand anything yet. This is the best for you. I don’t care but you’re going to that boarding school regardless. You’ll understand one day when you’re older,” Kyungsoo’s father made it clear, walking off and leaving the room with the slam of the door, thus ending the argument at that.

 

Shortly later, Chanyeol saw Kyungsoo walking off to leave the room too. Kyungsoo was visibly shaking as he walked.

As Kyungsoo was striding across the room, his knees bucked under him, causing him to fall onto his knees onto the floor. Kyungsoo caught his fall by putting his arms out in front of him.

Chanyeol squirmed, startled by seeing Kyungsoo’s fall. Chanyeol wasn’t brave enough to come down from the rafters to help Kyungsoo, despite how much he wanted to, out of fear that someone else might come in any minute.

However, as fast as he fell, Kyungsoo picked himself back up albeit with slight struggling. Kyungsoo managed to get himself back on his feet where he slowly walked away, leaving the room and turning the lights off with him.

 

 

 

It wasn’t much of a surprise to Kyungsoo that he wasn’t able to fall asleep easily that night.

Kyungsoo remained laying in his bed, staring at the dark ceiling as his mind continued to race and was filled with thoughts that pertained to the argument he had with his father earlier on.

Kyungsoo had turned the lights off in his room but he had left the curtains slightly drawn open, allowing some light from outside to pour into his room and providing some amount of illumination.

Although the moon was full that night, it had rained earlier on and was cloudy as a result. The moon remained obscured behind the clouds, only casting a dim blurred reflection from behind the clouds.

 

 Kyungsoo knew that he couldn’t do much to go against his father. There was no use trying to convince his mother to change his father’s mind too since she seemed to be in the same boat as him.

The best thing Kyungsoo could think of was to spend the remaining months as best as he could while sucking up the fact that he would have to do things that he didn’t want to do.

It was just one year, after all, and there would be several breaks in-between when Kyungsoo would be able to come home again.

 

Life is and always has been like this for Kyungsoo for as long he could remember. By now, Kyungsoo probably had a gist and almost figured out why his life was like this.

Kyungsoo just wasn’t brave enough to neither acknowledge nor accept the looming truth that he suspected it to be.

 

 

Kyungsoo rolled onto his side, hopefully trying to find a more comfortable position in which he would be able to fall asleep and forget his worries even if for a night.

By doing so, Kyungsoo was now lying on his side facing the window with the half-open curtains.

When the clouds finally moved from obscuring the moon behind it, soft moonlight came pouring into Kyungsoo’s room through the glass panes of the windows.

 

It was then that Kyungsoo was finally able to see a bit more clearly, to see that he was not alone in his room.

There was a person or rather a vampire standing with his back turned to Kyungsoo, gazing up at the moon in the sky above through the window.

 

 

“Chanyeol! I didn’t know you were coming.” Kyungsoo exclaimed, almost excitedly. Kyungsoo sat up in bed and threw the blankets off his body, ready to get out of bed to greet Chanyeol.

“My apologies, Kyungsoo. I know we’re not supposed to see each other today but I overheard you arguing with your father. I don’t wish to meddle in your business but I couldn’t help but be concerned from what I heard,” Chanyeol spoke up, glancing over his shoulder at Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo sighed, “That, huh? I guess you know now that I have to go to boarding school next year.”

 

While that was one thing, Chanyeol surely felt that there was something else that could probably need some addressing too.

Somehow, Kyungsoo knew that too.

 

 


	3. All in a good time

 

“It’ll be fine, Chanyeol. I’m only going to school for one more year and then there’ll be holidays in between for me to come back. Before you know it, I’ll be back here again. Besides, it’s not like I’m going away tomorrow. I still have almost nine months before I have to go,” Kyungsoo tried to explain.

“That is one thing-,” Chanyeol responded, not fully convinced it seemed, “-but you seemed rather distraught and against your father’s decision for reasons other than that. It sounded really concerning to me.” Chanyeol noted, standing near the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed with his arms folded over his chest.

 

Kyungsoo was seated up in his bed and gripped the fabric of his blanket, fisting the material in his hands when he heard Chanyeol pointed out that fact.

Kyungsoo looked back up at the standing Chanyeol, who had his back turned to the window and was thus shun open by the soft glowing moonlight from behind.

Kyungsoo opened his mouth to say something but only ended up making stuttering noises, before giving up and turning his head away.

 

“So, there is something isn’t there? Well then, I don’t wish to meddle in your family matters so I will take my leave then,” Chanyeol implied, ready to turn on his heel and leave Kyungsoo for the night, considering the fact that they weren’t even supposed to meet each other that day.

“Wait, don’t go,” Kyungsoo quickly lurched forward on his bed, almost falling off the side so he could catch Chanyeol by the wrist.

“Sure, what is it?” Chanyeol replied, pausing and turning to look back at Kyungsoo who would’ve fallen off the bed if the latter had not caught him.

“My parents don’t mean me any harm. I swear. I was just overreacting because I was upset about being sent away. Please don’t take to heart all the things I said earlier on. I wasn’t thinking when I said all of that,” Kyungsoo tried to explain to Chanyeol, looking visibly sad at it.

 

Chanyeol heaved a sigh and moved closer to Kyungsoo, helping the younger boy regain his balance and to sit upright on the bed before letting go.

Chanyeol remained standing by the edge of the bed as he talked, “I apologize but I can’t help to notice that your parents are severely lacking presence in your life. I am unsure if that’s the way things are in this day and age, but from what I can recall, that is usually a huge sign to be concerned about.”

Kyungsoo tried to justify, “They’re just really busy people and because of their job, they have to keep up appearances. It’s really hard for them and I’m always getting sick and they have no time to always take care of me. They need to work to earn money for me and my brother and sister.”

“-but your parents seem wealthy. If they aren’t able to take care of you themselves, why don’t I see them hire other people to take care of you like a nanny or a governess?” Chanyeol questioned.

Kyungsoo quickly answered, “I used to have people like that to take care of me but I’m older now. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself now so I don’t need that kind of help. You’ve seen me alone all the time, haven’t you? You can see that I am perfectly fine by myself.”

“That is true,” Chanyeol acknowledged, slightly nodding his head, “I take your word for it but I just couldn’t help but be worried for your wellbeing.”

“I promise you, I am fine,” Kyungsoo assured.

“Don’t you ever get lonely though?” Chanyeol couldn’t help but ask, somehow being able to relate to how Kyungsoo probably felt most of the time.

“I used to, then I met you,” Kyungsoo smiled, looking up towards Chanyeol.

Chanyeol too smiled and chuckled, “You really are adorable, aren’t you?”

Kyungsoo kept smiling, beaming under Chanyeol’s shadow obscuring the moonlight. Chanyeol made him happy, it was as simple as that.

 

 

 

 

Soon, meeting each other for three days a week and only during the mornings didn’t seem enough for both Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.

They enjoyed each other’s company the most and there seemed too little time for everything it is they wanted to talk about, especially considering that Kyungsoo would have to move out the following year in the autumn.

 

Chanyeol figured out another way to visit Kyungsoo more often; which was to come to Kyungsoo’s room at night and accompany him until he fell asleep.

Chanyeol noticed how Kyungsoo’s parents rarely if ever went into his room, least to say to talk to him after dinner time.

Furthermore, the cleaning services didn’t come at night, so Chanyeol could visit Kyungsoo in his room every night of the week without the risk of anyone finding out.

 

 

Most of the time, Kyungsoo would ask Chanyeol to watch a movie with him through the night until he fell asleep.

By then, they had run out of vampire movies to watch and Kyungsoo would try to make Chanyeol watch popular films of the past years. This was so Chanyeol could slowly catch up with today’s modern and popular culture.

Kyungsoo couldn’t help but notice the expression that Chanyeol displayed when the movie they were watching was displaying a scenic shot of the landscape and environment.

Kyungsoo saw how Chanyeol’s mouth hung slightly open and how his eyes were trained, fully focused on the screen when the scenic shot came on.

It didn’t quite look like Chanyeol was very awe-stricken or impressed at it. If Kyungsoo could describe it, Chanyeol’s expression was more that of longing and fondness, as if Chanyeol missed being out in the world very much.

Kyungsoo didn’t point this out to Chanyeol, keeping it to heart but devising a plan to possibly fulfill Chanyeol’s wish one day.

 

 

Kyungsoo’s nights were never lonely from then on. If it wasn’t watching movies, they could be playing games.

Kyungsoo had gone through much hassle and quite a lot of trouble to introduce gaming to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol initially had a headache when he discovered what electronic games were, finding them similar to movies but with the ability to control a character and determine the storyline.

There was so much to remember and learn of now, especially when Chanyeol decided to go into hibernation in the past century with the most rapid development that humans had gone through.

 

 

Being the son of rich and influential parents who never had time for him, Kyungsoo always had the latest games and consoles as soon as the new releases hit the stores.

While a younger Kyungsoo was excited to get all the new games and gadgets, he realized now that his parents only bought it for him to keep him shut up and to stop asking them for attention.

It hit Kyungsoo again about how lonely he was for a second time when he realized that he didn’t really have anyone to play games with for multi-player options.

 

Kyungsoo did try asking his older brother to play games with him, but his older brother was never interested in games and spent almost all of his time studying.

Everyone in Kyungsoo’s family always made excuses whenever he asked to spend time with them, and eventually, Kyungsoo too stopped asking because he would always get the same answer over and over again.

Kyungsoo’s prayers were sort of answered when Chanyeol came along, although he surely didn’t even dream of becoming friends with a vampire.

 

 

 

 

“You should really try to make friends with other people when you start school next year,” Chanyeol suggested, resting on a chair in Kyungsoo’s room one night with his legs crossed and his arms on his lap.

Kyungsoo was on his phone, sitting somewhere on the floor beside Chanyeol when he overheard that. “I don’t need friends, I have you,” Kyungsoo commented.

“I know that but I can’t go with you when you leave for boarding school. I won’t be there for you. You need some human friends too,” Chanyeol noted.

“It’s not easy for me to make friends. They don’t understand me and my classmates hardly talk to me if ever,” Kyungsoo stated, putting his phone down.

“Well, have you ever tried being the one to talk to them first?” Chanyeol advised, “Find someone with similar interests and someone whose personality you can get along with. You can get along with a vampire, I’m sure you could get along with humans who are your ago too.”

“I’m scared of being hurt,” Kyungsoo admitted, hanging his head.

“I am too,” Chanyeol added, “-but I keep trying foolishly, hoping that the next time I try it will be different. I’m not saying that you should keep trying again and again even if it hurts and brings nothing to you. Everyone wants to feel rewarded for their efforts too. No one can just endure failing and endless pain for so long.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Kyungsoo asked, tilting his head up to look at Chanyeol seated on the chair above him on the floor.

“I’m trying to say that you should probably take different approaches instead. If you do fail, rest and give yourself some time to recover before you decided that you want to try again. Take breaks but don’t give up just yet.” Chanyeol tried to guide.

“I still don’t know if I can do that yet,” Kyungsoo replied.

“It’s okay, just remember what I have told you then,” Chanyeol consoled.

Kyungsoo chuckled, “-remember, huh? Will you even remember what you told me since vampires have such bad memories?”

“If you’re always there to remind me, I won’t forget,” Chanyeol smiled to himself.

 

 

 

 

One night, in particular, Chanyeol was in the rafters again when he was alerted by the sounds of crying coming from the room of Kyungsoo’s younger sister.

Chanyeol, now being the family’s official stalker, couldn’t help but look through the ceiling lighting holes at what was going on beneath.

Chanyeol saw Kyungsoo’s father tucking the young girl into bed, then reading her a storybook to comfort her. Lastly, he kissed her on the forehead before she went off to sleep.

Chanyeol couldn’t remember if all humans did this back then, or whether it was a newer practice of this day and age.

It was seemingly something normal between a parent and child. However, Chanyeol could feel from that, that Kyungsoo’s parents treated him very differently than how they treated his other siblings.

 

Chanyeol kept it to himself, though, choosing to withhold what he saw from Kyungsoo.

 

 

 

 

One winter morning, about five months since Kyungsoo moved into the mansion; Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were hanging out as usual when Kyungsoo sighed and slammed down a book on the table he was sitting behind.

Kyungsoo let out a disgruntled noise and began anxiously running his hand through his hair.

Chanyeol was standing by the window in the study room, shifting his weight onto one leg as he was looking out at the snowy landscape of the mansion’s extensive yard.

 

“What’s wrong?” Chanyeol asked, looking over his shoulder.

“I was going through the school’s language lessons syllabus, and I just can’t get it no matter how much I reread or try to understand it,” Kyungsoo complained.

“Is it a foreign language you don’t speak?” Chanyeol tried to guess, looking back at the window and the snow falling outside.

“No, it’s what we speak but there’s just so much literature, poetry and I have to learn the language history and it’s antiquity form too,” Kyungsoo sighed, “-it’s so much more complicated than what I learned at my old school.”

“Let me see that,” Chanyeol walked over to Kyungsoo’s desk swiftly, picking up the book that Kyungsoo had slammed to the table.

 

Chanyeol read through the book, skimming the content and flipping through the pages while a distracted Kyungsoo picked up his phone and began scrolling through it instead.

Chanyeol smirked, snickering, “This is easy.”

“What!?” Kyungsoo exclaimed, looking up from his phone to Chanyeol standing near the table.  

“Don’t worry about it anymore, Kyungsoo. I can help teach this to you,” Chanyeol proudly affirmed, “This is how the language was written and spoken before I came here.”

“You remember that? Wow,” Kyungsoo was impressed.

“I forget a lot of things but the ones I do remember, I will never forget for as long as I exist,” Chanyeol informed.

 

 

Chanyeol stuck by his word and while he had never been a teacher or an educator in any form, Chanyeol still tried his best to help tutor Kyungsoo on his language lessons.

To Chanyeol, it felt so natural to speak again in such an antiquated form of the language that he was used to but hadn’t done so in years.

For a while, Chanyeol felt like he was living in the past again, in the times that were now long gone and all now just a part of a distant memory he couldn’t quite recall.

 

Kyungsoo, on the other hand, experienced firsthand how much classic literature and language bored him.

While Kyungsoo tried his best to pay attention to Chanyeol’s lecture, he couldn’t help but fall asleep on the desk with his face planted on the book.

The warm room contrasting the cold outside, on top of the less amount sunlight in the winter did certainly help to make such a comfortable environment for Kyungsoo to fall asleep in.

Kyungsoo fell even deeper asleep when a comfortable warmth enveloped him, making him feel somewhat safe, secure and at ease.

 

 

When Kyungsoo woke up again, it was evening time. His parents were already home by then and Kyungsoo’s mother was knocking on his door, asking him to come down for dinner.

Chanyeol had left by then and Kyungsoo was alone in the study room.

Kyungsoo wiped off the drool at the corner of his mouth with the back of his palm, sitting up in his seat and then noticing that there was a rather oversized coat draped over his shoulders.

 

Kyungsoo almost instantly recognized to be the same coat that Chanyeol always wore, since Chanyeol only ever had one set of clothes that never seemed to wear out.

It was as if Chanyeol’s clothes were as immortal as he was.  

“This is really old,” Kyungsoo commented, chuckling, realizing that this coat blanketing him while he was asleep had made everything feel so warm and comfortable.

Kyungsoo returned the coat to Chanyeol when he came to visit again later that night.

 

 

 

 

On another morning, Chanyeol was wasting his time by hitting a rubber ball against the wall, catching the ball when it came back to him and then repeating the action all over again; while waiting for Kyungsoo who was still studying.

Kyungsoo had found the ball in some drawer before giving it to Chanyeol to play with.

“Chanyeol!” Kyungsoo cried out, pressing his face down on an open textbook on the desk.

“Hmm…?” Chanyeol hummed, continuing to throw the ball against the wall and then catching it.  

“Can you help me with history too? There’s so much text and things to remember,” Kyungsoo complained.

“Nope, I can’t help you with that. Anything but history,” Chanyeol had to refuse.

“Yeah, I know vampires have bad memories but don’t you remember at least a thing or two of the past?” Kyungsoo bemoaned.

“I do, of course, but nothing of it has to do with human history. Vampires have always tried to avoid humanity as best as they could over the course of history. We’re not involved with the humans so we wouldn’t know what the humans of the past had been up to either,” Chanyeol explained.

Kyungsoo continued to whine, wailing into his history textbook, “How am I supposed to remember all of this?”

Chanyeol dryly chuckled hearing Kyungsoo, speaking under his breath, “I tell myself the same thing all the time too.”

 

 

 

 

One evening in late winter, more than half a year since Kyungsoo moved into the mansion, Chanyeol was unable to visit Kyungsoo that particular day.

Kyungsoo had warned Chanyeol that his parents would be hosting an all-day party event at the mansion, where a lot of their business partners and friends would be coming over.

Chanyeol didn’t need further explanation to know that it was wise for him to stay hidden in the attic for the whole day. There would be too many humans under the same roof and that thought was enough to scare Chanyeol already.

 

While waiting for the whole event downstairs to be over, Chanyeol remained in his attic and read through Kyungsoo’s textbooks, so he could have a better understanding at what he would be trying to teach Kyungsoo with.

It was always dark in the attic with very minimal light, but vampires could see very well in the dark as they were mostly nocturnal so it was no problem for Chanyeol.

 

Kyungsoo had said that he would be busy the entire evening, being involved with the event and that he wouldn’t be around until after it was over.  

Chanyeol glanced up at the digital clock that Kyungsoo had gifted him, waiting for the time when Kyungsoo said that it was safe to come to his room.

Frankly, Chanyeol was rather pleased that Kyungsoo’s parents were letting him getting involved with something instead of being isolated in his room.

 

Chanyeol patiently waited until it was time when he could leave. He had waited over hundreds of years to emerge from his hibernation, waiting a few more hours was almost next to nothing to him.

 

 

When the time came, Chanyeol closed the textbook and slipped it into the inner pockets of his coat so he could return it to Kyungsoo. Only then, Chanyeol slowly, quietly and carefully left the attic to go down and meet Kyungsoo.

Chanyeol descended from the rafters and into the mansion through an air ventilation grill that he could pull open and put back in place when needed.

The air ventilation opening led Chanyeol to the storeroom, which he would use to exit down to the corridor and then head to Kyungsoo’s room.

 

For this purpose, Kyungsoo left the door to his room unlocked- always. Not that he had any reasons to be locking the door to his room before this. Before Chanyeol came along, no one but Kyungsoo and the cleaners who came every other day ever came into his room.

Kyungsoo personally couldn’t even remember the last time his parents or any of his siblings stepped into his room, or the last time Kyungsoo was even invited into their rooms for that matter.

 

 

When Chanyeol finally reached Kyungsoo’s room and stealthily made his entrance there, Kyungsoo was already lying on his side on the bed.

“Kyungsoo, are you asleep already?” Chanyeol asked softly, tiptoeing across the floor as he made his way closer to the bed.

There was no response and Kyungsoo remained still.

Chanyeol decided to ask again one more time but was met with the same lack of response. Thus, Chanyeol safely assumed that Kyungsoo had fallen asleep.

 

Not wanting to disrupt Kyungsoo’s sleep, Chanyeol was just about ready to leave when he heard soft, faint sounds of sobs and crying coming from Kyungsoo.

Hearing this, Chanyeol turned back and made his way to Kyungsoo, squatting on the floor near the edge of the bed where Kyungsoo was laying on.

“You should’ve told me if you were still awake,” Chanyeol voiced out, with obvious concern in the tone of his voice.

Kyungsoo slowly opened his eyes to see Chanyeol near him before screwing his teary eyes back shut and shaking his head. Kyungsoo buried himself under the blankets, holding the fabric over his body as if to shut out the entire world.

“What’s wrong, Kyungsoo? Do you want to talk to me about it?” Chanyeol softly tried to persuade, sitting himself down on the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed.

“It’s nothing,” Kyungsoo lied, his voice muffled from beneath the blankets.

“You won’t be crying if it was nothing. I know you,” Chanyeol pointed out, placing a reassuring hand on Kyungsoo’s form that was hidden beneath the blankets.

 

 

There was a pause and a short moment of silence that followed after, before Kyungsoo finally spoke up, slowly pulling the blankets off to reveal just his face.

“I fell down today,” Kyungsoo mumbled, seemingly hesitant to talk about the whole thing.

“There’s nothing wrong about that. People fall all the time. The only crime is to not get up again when one is perfectly capable of doing so,” Chanyeol responded.

“It’s not just that,” Kyungsoo shook his head, beginning to sob and cry again; “I wanted to help out at my parent’s party today so I was serving the drinks to the guests. But I fell down while I was doing it because of my stupid legs. I spilled the drinks all over a few people and made a big mess out of it. My parents got really mad at me and they made me stay in my room the entire evening. They haven’t even talked to me since then.”

Kyungsoo continued crying and pouring his heart out, his tears stinging his eyes as Chanyeol stroked him on the head, comforting him.

“It’s alright,” Chanyeol continuously assured, being as gentle as possible.

“Why am I so useless?” Kyungsoo sobbed.

“You’re not useless, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol corrected, “Some people just don’t realize how much you’re worth.”

Kyungsoo sniffed, wiping his tears with the sleeves of his shirt, “I wish I was more like you.”

“You mean old, depressed and lonely?” Chanyeol dryly chuckled, taking a jab at himself, self-deprecatingly.

Kyungsoo too laughed, feeling a lot more lightened up in just an instant.

 

“Here, let me read you a book before you go to sleep. Maybe you’ll feel better when you wake up tomorrow,” Chanyeol offered, retrieving the textbook from the pocket on his inner coat.

Kyungsoo saw this and commented, slightly laughing, “You’re seriously going to read me a textbook until I fall asleep? I’m going to sleep because of boredom if it’s like that.”

“What can I read for you then?” Chanyeol asked, looking and feeling dumbfounded.

“Anything but the textbook,” Kyungsoo replied, “-where did you learn to read stories before bedtime anyway? Do you always do that in the past?”

“I catch on to some things,” Chanyeol answered, getting off the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed to look for a different book.

 

 

Chanyeol walked over to the bookshelf in Kyungsoo’s room as he browsed through the selections in the dark, before picking out a book and then walking over to Kyungsoo’s bed.

Chanyeol sat back down on the mattress near the edge of Kyungsoo’s bed, with one leg resting on the bed and the other still on the floor.

Kyungsoo had moved a bit more towards the opposing side, so as to give Chanyeol more room to sit on the bed.

Chanyeol rested his head and back on the bed’s headboard before opening the book and began to read the title out loud to Kyungsoo.

 

“That book?” Kyungsoo expressed once he heard the title being read out to him.

“Yes, I found it in your bookshelf. I read this book once while you were studying. Have you read it yet?” Chanyeol asked, his eyes being able to read the book with ease even in minimal lighting.

“Nope, I haven’t. My parents had a lot of books and when we moved, they gave me some to put in my own bookshelf but I hardly read anything they give me,” Kyungsoo revealed, “-what is it about though?”

“Well,” Chanyeol flipped the book over in his hand to look at the cover art as he tried to give a summary to Kyungsoo based on what he remembered or understood about the book.

Chanyeol continued, “-it’s about a man who drinks some magic fluid and becomes immortal as a result. He has an older sister who raised him and is immortal like himself too but they end up separated from each other. He then travels for many years in search for his sister, where he does many things and meets many new people until he ends up in a world filled with other immortals like himself too.

“Hmm…immortals, huh?” Kyungsoo responded, “I guess that describes you better, doesn’t it?”

“I do feel that I can somewhat relate to the main character, especially regarding his journeys and years of wandering, and how he eventually becomes weary of living so long. I did feel that the character actually took his immortality quite seriously, more than I ever did.” 

“How is that so?” Kyungsoo asked, curiously, moving closer so he could rest his head almost near to the leg that Chanyeol propped up on the bed.

Chanyeol explained, “Well after the character discovers this world where the other immortals live, he begins to get bored of how the immortals lead this same and static life, where they seem to be subjected by an authority. He then sets out to seek the creator of the place that the immortals live so he can find answers.”

Chanyeol then added, “I don’t feel like I ever sought out answers like how vampires came to be, or if we have always lived like this. I don’t seek out other vampires other or try to find some hidden vampire communities for me to join. I am rather complacent with my life the way it is. I just-”

 

 

Chanyeol was about to continue talking when he realized that Kyungsoo had fallen asleep before he even finished.

Chanyeol didn’t even manage to read a single page from the book yet because he had ended up going off topic after Kyungsoo began asking him questions, not that either of them minded.

Kyungsoo was asleep with his head nested near Chanyeol’s leg, sleeping rather soundly and breathing calmly from the looks of it.

Some part of Chanyeol was impressed that Kyungsoo was able to fall asleep that fast too. Then again, Kyungsoo really had a long day and deserved all the rest that he could get.

 

Moving as gently as possible so as to not wake Kyungsoo up, Chanyeol fixed and pulled the blanket further up to cover more of Kyungsoo’s body.

Satisfied that Kyungsoo would be warm, safe and comfortable while asleep; Chanyeol then flipped to the first page of the book and began rereading the novel again.

Chanyeol had decided that he wouldn’t need to sleep that night and spend the entire time reading. As a vampire, he was able to stay awake for much longer than a human did. Vampires only really slept to waste time.

 

 

Chanyeol finished the entire novel yet again, just as the sun was about to rise the next morning and Kyungsoo too woke up shortly later to find Chanyeol still there by his side.

Kyungsoo woke up feeling glad and touched to know that there was actually someone who had spent the entire night watching over him, making sure he was alright.

Chanyeol, on the other hand, felt a rather unexplainably odd but warm and somewhat pleased feeling all at the same time. Chanyeol never felt like this in all the years he had lived, or maybe he had but just forgotten about it.

Chanyeol felt that he had confronted his technical immortality and the prospect of having to wander for eternity, all through the main character of the novel that he had read again for the second time. Never had Chanyeol felt that anything came as close as to being relatable. 

 

Somehow, just somehow, Chanyeol couldn’t help but be reminded of the one distant memory that had never left him.

The only one memory of old that Chanyeol remembered vividly and in all of its detail.

Chanyeol could continue to live hundreds of years more and he was sure that he would never forget that.

 

 


	4. Hand in hand

 

In spring when the days began to get longer than the nights and the temperature began to get warmer by the day, Kyungsoo was the same as ever. Chanyeol even more so.

He was still stuck within the many walls of the mansion he lived in. In fact, Kyungsoo had only left the mansion probably once or twice since he moved there with his family in the summer of the previous year.

Chanyeol, on the other hand, had yet to leave the mansion in over a century-and-a-half.

In that aspect, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo were very much alike.

 

When all they did was stay home, they soon ran out of things to do and talk about. There were far more things to do and talk to each other about, but not while they were still confined within the mansion that seemed ever too small now in perspective.

The world out there was much more a larger place with vast opportunities for either of them.

Chanyeol had been out in the world once but that was a long time ago and he had forgotten about it for the most part.

Meanwhile, Kyungsoo had yet to be out there to experience the world and experience a taste of how it was like.

 

 

 

By then, Kyungsoo was rather sick of spending almost his entire day studying.

There were only a few months left before he had to leave for boarding school, and he wasn’t set on studying for the remaining time he had here since he could do all the studying he wanted later on when he was back in school.

For now, Kyungsoo wanted to cherish the limited time he had left with his best friend, Chanyeol. Since he wouldn’t be getting to spend all the time he wanted to with Chanyeol once he was away.

 

 

One morning that same spring, Kyungsoo, and Chanyeol had been playing billiards on the billiards table available in the mansion’s drawing room.

Billiards was one of the few games that Chanyeol was familiar with and had already existed around the time before his hibernation, and even longer before that.

Although Chanyeol had mostly forgotten all the rules and methods of its play, he still recognized the table and its setup, bringing a sense of comforting familiarity to him.

 

 

After a few hours and several rounds of billiards, Kyungsoo continued playing against himself while Chanyeol sat on an armchair, watching and observing Kyungsoo.

The one thing that struck Chanyeol’s attention was Kyungsoo’s legs and posture.

Kyungsoo’s legs were continuously jittering and shaking while he stood. Although it was subtle, slight and hard to notice at first, Kyungsoo’s legs would continue to shake even more the longer he spent standing up.

 

 

At some point, when Kyungsoo had been standing up too long, he gave up and plopped down on the floor beside the chair that Chanyeol was seated on.

“Ugh, I can’t feel my legs anymore,“ Kyungsoo grunted, stretching his legs in front of him on the floor with the cue stick rested on his lap.

“Tired, huh?” Chanyeol asked, leaning forward on the chair to be closer to talk to Kyungsoo.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo sighed, resting his back on the sides of the chair.

“How long can you usually stand up or walk before your legs get tired?” Chanyeol questioned, pressing his palms together.

“Not very long at all,” Kyungsoo answered, rolling the cue stick back and forth on his lap, “I didn’t learn to walk until I was over two years old which is considered very late for development. I had lots of surgeries at that age because of my heart problem so I grew up very slow.”

“I see,” Chanyeol nodded, “Then what about after that? You’re eighteen-years-old now. You had time to catch up but you still move around like a fawn that had just learned to walk sometimes- no offense though.”

Kyungsoo dryly chuckled as he ran his thumb on the small circular surface of the end of the cue stick, “I don’t know the exact answer to your question but I know that children like me are supposed to go for physical therapy to help them walk. I guess my parents didn’t care to get that for me because they gave up on me- that I would ever be able to walk.”

 

Upon hearing that, Chanyeol furrowed his eyebrows, forming deep wrinkles on his forehead. Chanyeol found himself speechless for a few seconds, with his mouth slightly hung open in astonishment.

Suddenly, Chanyeol began to understand a lot of things that were unexplained- especially regarding Kyungsoo’s relationship with his parents.

Chanyeol resumed, “Kyungsoo, I don’t want to be the person to be breaking this news to you, but what your parents did to you were child neglect and abuse. That is by all means, wrong, especially considering how wealthy and capable your parents were to provide care or someone to care for you.”

Kyungsoo merely shrugged, “I realized that a while ago but I can’t do much about it. I don’t blame them either but I just need to finish school and once I’ll graduate, I’ll move away from them and find my own way in this world.” Kyungsoo tilted his chin upwards to look at Chanyeol hovering above him, “When I finally leave, do you want to come with me?”

“Of course, I’m not staying in this shithole without you,” Chanyeol smiled softly and very reassuringly.

Kyungsoo laughed, “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

“From you, of course,” Chanyeol snickered, making it sound very obvious.

“Cool,” Kyungsoo smiled back, lifting two thumbs up.

“Very cool,” Chanyeol responded before lifting himself up from the armchair, pushing himself up with his arms on the armrest, “-but first, we’ll need to do something about those legs of yours.”

“What is it?” Kyungsoo asked, putting the cue stick away on the floor.

 

 

With Chanyeol’s help, Kyungsoo got back to standing on his feet again. Kyungsoo’s legs felt less tired after the brief rest, but they still felt sore and weary.

“Since you never got all those walking practice and therapy to strengthen your legs, I’m just going to help you with that,” Chanyeol announced, with his arm around Kyungsoo’s waist to help the latter stand up.

“Do you think this will work? I think I’m fine though,” Kyungsoo expressed, tilting his head up to look at the taller Chanyeol pressed to his side.

“No, you are not fine as it is. You’re not used to walking so your legs never got the time to develop strength. From today onwards, we are going to practice that. Good legs are important for running away from humans who want to kill you,” Chanyeol replied.

“I don’t need to run away from humans though,” Kyungsoo clarified.

“Everyone has their demons, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol explained.

 

 

Chanyeol took the first step, taking smaller strides to make up for the obvious difference in leg length so Kyungsoo could still walk easily.

Chanyeol instructed Kyungsoo to follow suit, while he had his arm wrapped around Kyungsoo to help and support him while standing up.

 

 

They would do this almost every day and every time, they would walk even further than the last time around the spacious mansion that had more than enough room for them.

Even at night when Chanyeol couldn’t show himself because Kyungsoo’s family was home; Chanyeol would be in Kyungsoo’s room, helping the latter to walk in circles around the room.

 

After some time, Chanyeol would let go of Kyungsoo and allow him to walk alone and unaided. Chanyeol would still be close by to make sure Kyungsoo was safe and to catch him whenever he fell.

 

They didn’t just do walking. Chanyeol would make Kyungsoo climb up and down stairs too, which the mansion happened to have an abundance of.

Chanyeol would also follow suit, walking slow and slightly a few steps behind Kyungsoo while they were climbing up and down the stairs.

 

 Chanyeol never left Kyungsoo to do it alone, always slightly behind so Kyungsoo could look back and see that Chanyeol was right there with him.

Every time Kyungsoo felt like giving up and like he couldn’t go any further, he would look behind and see Chanyeol smiling back at him.

“You can do it,” Chanyeol would cheer on every time.

And just like a kindling a dying fire, Chanyeol made Kyungsoo felt like he could go just a bit more.

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol eventually stopped coming down from the rafters and sneaking down the corridor to visit Kyungsoo at night, because it was not possible to wait until everyone was in their rooms to not notice him.

This way, Chanyeol could come anytime even when Kyungsoo’s family were still up and about around the residence. They lived there after all.

 

Chanyeol found an alternative way by going out to the roof and scaling the building through its structure until he arrived on the small balcony outside Kyungsoo’s room.

Kyungsoo was pleasantly surprised to see Chanyeol knocking on the glass one moonless night, while he was waiting for his parents and younger sister to go to bed so Chanyeol could visit him.

 

“That must be convenient- to just climb and go anywhere you want to go,” Kyungsoo expressed, rather amazed at Chanyeol’s physical capability as he unlocked the windows for Chanyeol to climb in.

“Maybe you can do it too one day if we keep working on your legs,” Chanyeol replied, sitting on the ledge of the half-opened window with the night sky overhead outside.

Kyungsoo chuckled lightly, “Not to that extent, I don’t think so. I’m only human.”

“Only?” Chanyeol reiterated, leaning his back on the window sill as he was still seated on the ledge, “You’re greater than that.”

Kyungsoo couldn’t help but smile as he conveyed, “I still wish I was as cool like a vampire like you.”

“-and I wish I could die naturally like a human would,” Chanyeol shrugged, “We’ll always want things we can’t have but why would we want things that we already possess anyway. There’s where the feeling of want arises from.”

“You’re weird, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo teased, chortling.

“-probably not as weird as you when you thought that it would be interesting to be friends with a vampire,” Chanyeol retorted, playfully tossing the banter around.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, spring too came and gone, bringing in the hottest season of the year. With the arrival of summer, it also marked the last remaining few months left for Kyungsoo at the mansion before he was shipped away to boarding school.

Now that the beginning of school was drawing near, Kyungsoo once again began to worry about his studies and not wanting to be left behind because of the one year he took off from school.

 

 

Kyungsoo yelled, slamming down a book on his desk, looking rather panicked and scared.

Chanyeol, who was playing games on Kyungsoo’s tablet looked up and responded, “What’s wrong, Kyungsoo?”

“Shit! How did I miss something as important as that?” Kyungsoo panicked, picking up the book again and quickly flipping through the pages, seemingly looking for something.

“What is it?” Chanyeol scrunched his nose, putting the tablet away and paying full attention to Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo frantically answered, “I didn’t read the school’s syllabus properly and I only realized now that there are music lessons and classes that I have to attend as part of the course so I can graduate high school.”

“-and?” Chanyeol continued asking, not understanding what the problem was yet.

“I used to play the piano many years ago as a child but my parents stopped sending me to music lessons after that. I’m really rusty- in fact, I think I’ve forgotten a whole lot about it. And the school expects me to be able to play an instrument with at least intermediate level to even pass the unit. I spent months preparing for all of the other subjects but not this!” Kyungsoo agitatedly had to explain, almost at the point of ripping his own hair out due to the stress.

“Oh, that’s simple,” Chanyeol dismissed, waving his hand away, “Don’t worry. Like I have informed you prior to this, I can assist in tutoring you in any subject but history. Don’t your parents own a grand piano too- the one in the hall on the floor below?”

“So you can teach me how to play on that piano again?” Kyungsoo sounded slightly more hopeful now.

Chanyeol scratched his chin, “I’ll see if I can actually remember some things like reading sheet music. My muscle memory is better so I think I can help you with it, depending on how much it has changed within the past 150 years or so too.”

Kyungsoo sighed in great relief, placing a hand over his chest, “Thank you so much. I thought I would die there.”

Hearing that, Chanyeol chuckled to himself, maybe a bit dryly.

 

Kyungsoo insisted that their piano lessons had to begin on the same day too, being worried about not having enough time before the start of the school year.

Unless they were taking their walks around the mansion, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo seldom came around to the part of the mansion where the grand piano was located at.

The piano was in the main hall, just below the staircase that was somewhat near the main entrance of the mansion on the ground floor.

 

 

Kyungsoo walked as fast as his two legs could bring him to get to the piano. Chanyeol habitually walked behind Kyungsoo, a few steps lagging behind so he could keep an eye on Kyungsoo.

Once they were there, Kyungsoo attempted to lift the piano’s lid but soon found that he wasn’t capable of doing so. Not that that was surprising to him.

“Let me get that,” Chanyeol offered, lifting up the lid covering the piano keys and pulling the stool out from under the piano before ushering for Kyungsoo to sit on it beside him.

 

“Okay, if I remember, this is the middle C key and this is the D, E and so on,” Kyungsoo tried to recall, pointing and hovering his finger above the keys.

Kyungsoo continued muttering to himself as he tried to remember whatever it is he learned many years ago.

Chanyeol hummed in thought at the keys for a bit while in silence as he tried to recall the keys and of how to even start playing the piano.

“Right,” Chanyeol sat upright, snapping from his temporary trance and cracking his knuckles, “I think I remember this.”

“Nice,” Kyungsoo responded before his inquisitiveness made him ask, “How does a vampire know how to play the piano anyway?”

“I don’t remember exactly how I learned to play the piano but I do know that it was because of me trying to blend in with humans. I can’t recall the details though so I am unable to tell you more than that,” Chanyeol revealed.

“Do you remember any pieces? Can you play something for me? Anything, even scales are fine,” Kyungsoo requested, now really curious as to what a vampire would know of.

 

Chanyeol then stared at the palms of his hand, squinting his eyes and twitching his neck occasionally at the same time.

“Chanyeol?” Kyungsoo interrupted, lightly poking on Chanyeol’s arm with a finger, confused at Chanyeol’s perplexed expression.

“Sorry, I’m trying to see if I remember something. This is harder than I thought it would be,” Chanyeol apologized. 

“It’s alright if you don’t. No worries, I can just search for some tutorial online,” Kyungsoo suggested, having already pulled out his phone.

“Wait, I got it!” Chanyeol declared, placing a hand on Kyungsoo’s arm and then gripping it.

“S-sure,” Kyungsoo hesitated before putting his phone back into the pockets of his trousers, “I’ll give you some space. I can stand and watch till you’re done,” Kyungsoo told before moving off the piano stool and standing beside it instead.

 

 

Chanyeol sat with his back straight upright, looking to his feet to see that they were properly aligned with the foot pedals before positioning his arms and pressing down the first few keys with the correct fingers.

Chanyeol continued, feeling the muscle memory and even the recollection of how the piece was to be played, slowly return to him and fill his head as if it was just yesterday. When, in fact, Chanyeol hadn’t been behind the keys of a piano in over a hundred years.

 

Kyungsoo stood attentively, paying extra attention to how Chanyeol’s long fingers moved over the keyboard and adeptly pressed down the keys with proper timing and speed.

The piece that Chanyeol was playing purely from memory was unfamiliar to Kyungsoo. Despite that, Kyungsoo could feel an implied sense of fondness and longing for something that was distant- all of it just from hearing the piece that was being played by Chanyeol.

 

Kyungsoo noticed how Chanyeol’s head was slightly lowered and how his eyes were lidded and softly gazing down on his fingers and the keyboard.

There was something about this sight that made it seem so intimate, that made Chanyeol seem so ethereal but yet still so close.

 

Initially, Kyungsoo felt awe-stricken and impressed.

Now, he just felt a strong feeling of adoration and affection towards Chanyeol.

Then, Kyungsoo started thinking about how much he’d hate to have Chanyeol away from him for the rest of his days.

 

 

 

 

 

Almost towards the end of Kyungsoo’s year-long break and just weeks before he had to go to boarding school, Kyungsoo insisted that they go out to town just for once.

Kyungsoo had only been to the nearest town two or three times since he moved there, and Chanyeol didn’t even remember that the town still existed until Kyungsoo told him of it.

 

It was a small town not far from the main city. The town served its purpose of catering for the people that lived in the area, of which the majority were families that were similarly wealthy to Kyungsoo’s.

Due to the gentrified surrounding community, the town was rather peaceful, quiet and sounded just nice for Chanyeol to be out and about at.

 

When Kyungsoo told Chanyeol about his intentions to bring the latter out on the trip to town, Kyungsoo was actually expecting Chanyeol to protest and refuse to go.

Much to his surprise, Chanyeol actually agreed to go and was pretty quick to make the decision too. Although Chanyeol did express his worry about being out in public among other humans and if he would be discovered as a vampire.

Kyungsoo did clarify to Chanyeol that most people hardly believed in the existence of vampires in the current day and age, mostly believing vampires to be a part of classical myth and fiction.

Chanyeol was a bit worried still but agreed to go, nonetheless.

 

 

Their day trip to town would take place on the day when Kyungsoo’s parents would be away for several days on a business trip, where Kyungsoo’s younger sister would be coming along with them.

Kyungsoo’s older brother did not return home for the summer and was said to be somewhere else, vacationing in a different country.

Thus, leaving the mansion to Kyungsoo and Chanyeol alone.

 

Before the day they would go out to town, Kyungsoo had ordered clothes from an online store for Chanyeol to wear while they were outside.

Chanyeol still wore clothes from the previous century and Kyungsoo wanted Chanyeol to blend in as much as possible, wanting to ease Chanyeol’s worry about possibly being singled out as a vampire.

 

Chanyeol laughed at himself in the mirror when he saw his reflection, after wearing the jeans and hoodie that Kyungsoo had bought for him.

“I look like the people in the pictures on the internet,” Chanyeol continued laughing, finding the whole thing rather amusing.

“You know, it has never occurred to me that vampires can actually see their reflection in a mirror,” Kyungsoo commented, also looking in the mirror at Chanyeol’s reflection.

“Of course we can, those are just tales,” Chanyeol nodded, smiling and trying to refrain from laughing at himself again.

“You look good, you’ll blend in just fine with the people,” Kyungsoo assured, scrutinizing Chanyeol’s current appearance again.

“You think so?” Chanyeol asked, pulling the hem of his hoodie to inspect the material that he was not used to wearing.

“Definitely,” Kyungsoo nodded, “Now you look like just any young adult out there.”

“Cool, I suppose,” Chanyeol trusted.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo’s parents left with his younger sister on the business trip in the morning, whereby they wouldn’t be back until the day after tomorrow.

By the afternoon after they left, Kyungsoo had hailed a car to the mansion to pick him and Chanyeol up to drive them to town.

 

By then, Chanyeol was acquainted and familiar to what cars were, except that he last knew them as “automotive” when it began emerging around the time before he went into hibernation.

Chanyeol still had to get used to the idea that those “automotive” had changed very much since then, and that driverless cars were apparently a thing too now.

From Chanyeol’s perspective, it was the humans that seemed like the more “mystical” being when compared to vampires.

 

 

 

Chanyeol watched in awe at the scenery during the drive to and through the town. This was the first time that Chanyeol had left the mansion and its compound in such a long time.

Lately, Chanyeol had only seen it through pictures and videos on the internet that Kyungsoo had shown him. This was the first time since then that Chanyeol was seeing it in real time with his own pair of eyes.

Chanyeol was even older than the formation of the country they lived in, but on that day he felt very much like an enthusiastic child on their first trip ever.

Kyungsoo was glad that he was able to elicit such a response from Chanyeol, being happy if Chanyeol too was happy.

 

Kyungsoo had the driver drop them off at the town’s main shopping street, with the instruction to pick them up again in the evening before it got dark.

 

 

Their first stop on the street was at a confectionary shop that served desserts, sweets, ice creams, and the likes. Where, even on the curbside, the sickly sweet smell of the delicacies served in the shop already permeated the air around them.

“I’m sorry, Chanyeol. I know you can’t have anything other than blood but I want to get something to eat here,” Kyungsoo told as they were standing on the steps outside the shop.

“Sure, go on ahead. Can I wait outside? The smell is quite strong for me,” Chanyeol explained, pulling the hood of his grey hoodie over his head.

“Okay, I’ll be quick then. Be right back,” Kyungsoo hastened, not wanting to waste time and entering the shop immediately.

 

 

Chanyeol waited outside under a tree that was planted on the street side.

It was a few weeks into the summer but it had been cool and raining a lot lately. That day was no exception either. The skies overhead were grey, cloudy and threatening to let up rain anytime soon.

Chanyeol didn’t mind that though. In fact, it was an advantage for him because the otherwise sunny weather in the summer would be giving him problems to be out and about. 

 

Chanyeol would have wanted to accompany Kyungsoo inside the shop, except that the sweet sugary smell coming from the shop was rather offending to his senses.

Vampires were in a sense able to consume human food, except that their bodies would later force it out later through vomiting.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience and from the strong smell of food, Chanyeol could suddenly remember all the instances in the past, where he forced himself to eat human food in an effort to blend in with their communities.

 

Chanyeol retched and heaved a few times, hiding behind the tree because he didn’t want Kyungsoo to see him from the store window.

Chanyeol didn’t wish to make Kyungsoo worried for his own inconvenience. Chanyeol didn’t want to make Kyungsoo feel bad either for bringing him there.

Chanyeol hadn’t eaten anything to vomit and only ended up dry heaving, just from the smell alone.

 

After all that, Chanyeol then started to notice how hungry he was. It had literally been over a hundred years since his last meal and the hibernation had helped his last feeding last longer.

Chanyeol had been awake again for some time now and it was due time for his next feeding.

It was an inconvenience for now but Chanyeol would just have to deal with it later, not wanting it to interfere with the trip to the town he was on with Kyungsoo.

 

 

Throughout the day, Kyungsoo brought Chanyeol to several stores in town.

Although Chanyeol never asked for anything, Kyungsoo bought mostly clothes and shoes for Chanyeol to wear, considering the fact that Chanyeol had been wearing the same pair of clothes and shoes for years.

Kyungsoo, on the other hand, was more interested in food and all the places he could dine in around town.

Having been cooped up in the mansion for almost a year, Kyungsoo had gotten rather bored of takeout and deliveries, wanting to eat out ever since then.

 Everything was charged to Kyungsoo’s parent’s credit card, because Kyungsoo knew that his father would never complain no matter how much he spends, as long as it meant that Kyungsoo kept out of sight.

 

 

While Kyungsoo ate in probably the third or fourth food outlet they had visited that day, Chanyeol was going through the new phone that Kyungsoo had bought for him.

Kyungsoo had also registered a new number for Chanyeol under his parent’s company line. Since there were over at least 40 numbers being paid for by the company, Kyungsoo knew that it would be hard for them to trace that he had actually gotten another extra one.

But that was if they even cared that Kyungsoo had done so.

 

Sitting around all that amount of food that Chanyeol was subjected throughout that day, didn’t quite come easy.

Chanyeol had to hold down his stomach, breathe slowly and distract himself with other thoughts and his new phone. Chanyeol didn’t want to show Kyungsoo how it affected him, not wanting Kyungsoo to feel bad or guilty for it.

 

 

Throughout the entire day, Chanyeol made it a conscious decision to try his best to stop himself from dry heaving and gagging, since there was really nothing for him to throw up.

But in the end, it was Kyungsoo who ultimately vomited and expelled all the contents of his stomach at a corner down the street near the woods.

 

Kyungsoo bent over and threw up into an empty shopping bag, one of the many he had gotten from the shopping trip with Chanyeol.

Chanyeol carried the rest of the shopping bags in one hand, while the other hand rubbed up and down the length of Kyungsoo’s back.

“Ugh,” Kyungsoo grunted in between, feeling like he might continue to throw up again, “I think I ate too much.”

“Maybe,” Chanyeol supposed, comforting Kyungsoo.

 

 

When the heaving stopped and Kyungsoo thought that there was probably nothing else in his stomach for him to throw up, Kyungsoo tied up the shopping bag and disposed of it in a trash bin.

Kyungsoo felt quite bad for the garbage collectors who had to find his puke in there later on.

Kyungsoo wiped his mouth with some disposal napkins before getting rid of it too.

 

Then, the pair headed back to the main street to go to where the car to pick them up would be.

“Sorry about that,” Kyungsoo apologized, “I know that wasn’t really nice to look at.”

“All is good,” Chanyeol assured, “I don’t mind.”

“I get sick too fast compared to most people,” Kyungsoo lamented, speeding up his steps and taking longer strides to make up for the slight lag in pace between himself and Chanyeol, who was effortlessly ahead of him.

Kyungsoo then continued, looking up towards Chanyeol, “You know, if I was healthy as a child, I think I would’ve been grown to be as tall as you too.”

Chanyeol laughed, “Perhaps not.”

“Why not?” Kyungsoo playfully pouted, “Is it because vampires are taller than average compared to humans?”

“I’m not sure about that,” Chanyeol said in response, speculating, “-but your family members don’t seem that tall to me either so it could just run in your family.”

 

Kyungsoo teasingly pinched Chanyeol on the arm, “You’re mean, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol laughed in return, playfully avoiding Kyungsoo.

 

 

Then, Chanyeol went still and fell silent on the sidewalk in front of a particular storefront window.

Chanyeol’s eyes were glued to the large poster hung and displayed at the storefront window, seemingly frozen and just suspended in time as he stared at in awe.

Kyungsoo couldn’t help but turn his gaze to what had managed to catch Chanyeol so hard.

 

Kyungsoo saw that the store was a branch of a travel and tour agency and that the poster was advertising a vacation package which included scenic pictures of the destination on it.

Kyungsoo now understood how this was able to produce such a response from Chanyeol.

It wasn’t that hard to figure it out. Chanyeol simply missed the outside world and longed to be in it again.

 

Right there and then, Kyungsoo thought up of a plan but did not reveal it to Chanyeol just yet.

Kyungsoo planned for it to be a surprise which he would eventually tell Chanyeol about before he left for boarding school in a few weeks time.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo’s parents returned with his younger sister the day after. Thereafter, it was less than two weeks before Kyungsoo himself would be leaving the mansion.

Before that, Kyungsoo was already busy and occupied with packing his things, getting ready for his departure and preparing for the surprise he planned for Chanyeol.

Kyungsoo hated to leave but it was just less than a year, and once he was done with school, he was free to do whatever and be wherever he wished to be.

 

Due to how busy he was, Kyungsoo didn’t get to spend as much time as usual with Chanyeol on the coming days.

Chanyeol, too had a phone now that Kyungsoo had gifted to him so it was possible for them to just text each other when it was inconvenient to meet up.

Nonetheless, Chanyeol still tried his best to come to see Kyungsoo whenever it was possible to do so.

 

 

 

On a grey rainy afternoon, the day before Kyungsoo was to leave, Chanyeol climbed down from outside of the mansion to arrive on the small balcony outside Kyungsoo’s room.

Kyungsoo’s parents were home that day and Chanyeol was unable to sneak down through the rafters to come to see Kyungsoo. But that and the rain did not stop Chanyeol from still coming to visit.

 

Kyungsoo was finalizing his luggage, making sure he had packed everything he would need when Chanyeol appeared outside on his balcony in the pouring rain.

Seeing that, Kyungsoo abandoned everything that he was occupied with to open the doors for Chanyeol.

 

 

“You know, I haven’t felt the rain on my skin in so long,” Chanyeol laughed, appearing to be amused but coming off as forlorn instead.

Even though Kyungsoo had opened the door for Chanyeol to come inside, Chanyeol was still standing outside in the pouring rain, drenched from head to toe in cold mid-summer rain.

Kyungsoo smiled, holding the glass doors to his balcony wide open, feeling the rain splatter and splash onto his bare feet from the balcony.

 

Chanyeol held out a hand to Kyungsoo, “Come, join me.”

Kyungsoo hesitated but eventually took Chanyeol’s hand and stepped out onto the balcony that was exposed to the overcast skies.

Kyungsoo found it hard to see at first, raindrops tearing and slightly blinding his eyes, having to blink rapidly to be able to see. But soon, he adjusted and was able to relish at the sight of Chanyeol in the rain above him.

 

Chanyeol propped himself up on the balcony railings, sitting there in front of Kyungsoo who remained standing.

Chanyeol was unbothered by the rain, being around in it so naturally.

 

Kyungsoo held Chanyeol’s hand, looking up at the vampire in the rain, “Chanyeol, let’s go on a journey with just the two of us.”

“Of course, I’ll be glad to,” Chanyeol responded, smiling, with his wet hair stuck to his forehead.

“One day we will, but not now though. We have to be apart and be by ourselves for now,” Kyungsoo regretfully had to mention.

“I lived hundreds of years, Kyungsoo. I can wait a year for you,” Chanyeol comforted, holding onto Kyungsoo’s hand.

 

Kyungsoo began to shiver, either from the cold rain or from his own feelings, “I’m afraid though…”

“Why are you afraid?” Chanyeol asked, concerned, cupping a hand on Kyungsoo’s cheek.

“I’m afraid that we won’t ever get to see each other after that one year. I don’t want to lose you,” Kyungsoo confessed, beginning to tear up under the rain.

“I’ll always be around, Kyungsoo. I can live forever,” Chanyeol told to reassure Kyungsoo.

“-but I won’t,” Kyungsoo replied, looking back up at Chanyeol with eyes that were both stained in tears and rain.

 

Chanyeol froze, surprised at the truth he clearly knew about but refused to even acknowledge. Kyungsoo was right in every sense and way.

 

“I love you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo declared, holding back his tears.

“No,” Chanyeol shook his head, denying himself too, “Don’t hurt yourself like that. I am not something you’re supposed to be in love with. I’m not human; we can’t be together like that. I’ll just end up hurting you. You’re still so young, Kyungsoo.”

“I’m eighteen-years-old now. I’m an adult,” Kyungsoo proudly asserted.

“I’m sorry, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol apologized, unable to stop himself from jittering because of the cold rain.

 

 

This wasn’t right, vampires weren’t supposed to be able to feel the cold. Chanyeol didn’t know why he suddenly felt like this.

He had lived so long and been through so much but all of this was still new and foreign to him.

“You would if you could, won’t you?” Kyungsoo questioned, looking back into Chanyeol’s eyes.

Chanyeol shook his head, lying straight out of his mouth to protect Kyungsoo, “No.”

“-then why are you crying too? I didn’t know vampires could cry,” Kyungsoo pointed out.

“I’m not crying, this is just rain,” Chanyeol answered, wiping his face with the back of his hand as he moved from sitting on the railings to standing up.

 

Kyungsoo pulled Chanyeol in by the neck, tiptoeing and then holding Chanyeol’s face so they could face each other close.

The rain continued to pour relentlessly from grey skies, not appearing to be letting up anytime soon. A cold wind blew and Kyungsoo closed his eyes before kissing Chanyeol, longingly.

Chanyeol placed a hand behind Kyungsoo’s neck to support it. Chanyeol’s eyes were half-open and he was just about to reciprocate the kiss but stopped himself from doing just so.

 

It wasn’t that Chanyeol didn’t love Kyungsoo because Chanyeol was sure that he did. In fact, how could he have not come to love Kyungsoo after everything?

But Chanyeol was too afraid, too unready and too much hurt from the past to be brave enough to try again.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo left the mansion before afternoon the next day.

As instructed, Chanyeol came down to Kyungsoo’s now empty room to find a box waiting for him on the bed.

A yellow note was posted on the box with the message to check the fridge in the garage before anyone else came home.

Chanyeol first went down to the garage to check, to see that Kyungsoo had left two blood bags from the hospital’s blood bank in the fridge.

Chanyeol immediately ripped open the bags and drank to his heart’s content, emptying both bags. With that amount, Chanyeol was good for another two years without having to feed.

 

 

Then, Chanyeol returned to Kyungsoo’s room to look into the box.

Chanyeol pulled open the box’s cover to find numerous papers, envelopes, and documents. Chanyeol took each one of it out, eyes widening in surprise when he realized that all of it was documents that Chanyeol would need for a year-long trip around the world.

 

Chanyeol smiled to himself. He had actually planned to hibernate for the entire year while Kyungsoo was away but there was a change of plans now.

 

 


	5. Let well alone

 

Boarding school actually turned out better than Kyungsoo expected it to be. Maybe he had been too pessimistic regarding the unfavorable idea of being shipped out hundreds of miles to school for an entire year.

But it wasn’t the idea of being sent away that bothered Kyungsoo more than the thought that of his family “physically distancing” him from them.

 

Kyungsoo was aware of how he stood in the eyes of his family, but he wasn’t brave enough to accept or acknowledge the truth.

Then, Chanyeol came along and Kyungsoo was even heavy-hearted to leave his new home, contradicting his earlier feelings towards it.

Just when Kyungsoo felt like he had a close friend with whom he could open up to personally, he had to leave Chanyeol behind.

It did make Kyungsoo feel like he wasn’t allowed to have nice things, especially when he believed that he actually deserved them.

In a way, Kyungsoo felt that life was being cruel to him but then again, when had life ever been fair to him?

 

 

 

In boarding school in a new place where no one knew who he was, Kyungsoo was able to make new friends who were also human and around his age.

Kyungsoo was at first reluctant to make new friends but he was constantly reminded of Chanyeol telling him to actually do so.

Maybe it was Kyungsoo’s own want but part of it was also owed to Chanyeol’s advice. Kyungsoo eventually made friends with his two roommates in boarding school.

 

In the school, rooms were shared among three people and for the first few weeks, Kyungsoo kept to himself as much as possible with minimal possible interaction between his two other roommates.

Eventually, Kyungsoo did slowly begin getting close to them. The three of them would walk to class together, eat together and study in the library together.

 

 

Kyungsoo felt that maybe he was wrong all the while; when he thought that most people wouldn’t want to be friends or be around him.  Because Kyungsoo’s new friends were actually nice and friendly to him.

On one occasion, Kyungsoo almost tripped on the many stairs in the school’s building while switching classes. Kyungsoo’s legs had gotten tired but his two new friends were there to catch him in time before he tumbled down the steps.

After that, Kyungsoo began opening up to them regarding his illness and his condition when he realized that they wouldn’t judge him or treat him differently because of that.

It put a new perspective to Kyungsoo that most people were actually nice, and that it was just his family who were less than nice to him.

 

Kyungsoo made more friends and joined clubs where he could play games with other people, something he always wanted to do.

Kyungsoo did fairly well in class thanks to one year of pre-studying for the syllabus and was well liked by his teachers for being cooperative and attentive in class.

 

Kyungsoo didn’t feel too lonely too much anymore. He looked forward to every new day spent in boarding school, and actually dreaded the thought of having to go back to the mansion his family lived in once the holidays came around.

Kyungsoo began to see that Chanyeol was right.

There indeed was a larger world out there with countless possibilities and lots more things that could be done, even for people like Kyungsoo who felt like he never had a place to belong to.

If anything, Kyungsoo was thankful to his parents for getting rid of him by sending him to boarding school, despite how much he detested the real reason behind why they did so.

 

But above it all, Kyungsoo always found himself looking out through the window at nights, wondering what his vampire friend was up to and where he was at now.

They still kept in touch now that Chanyeol could use a smartphone and work out how to send emails.  But for the most part, Chanyeol was somewhere isolated and far off from civilization where he was unreachable by most means.

Kyungsoo could only wait then until the next time he could hear from Chanyeol.

 

 

 

 

 

Right after Kyungsoo left to boarding school, Chanyeol too left the mansion to trace down and discover his origins.

It was difficult because so many years had passed since then and Chanyeol’s memory wasn’t the most reliable source out there.

But Chanyeol was convinced that if he found the place he used to live in, he would be able to track down the trails and find where he started at.

Vampires were either born or created. Chanyeol wasn’t sure if he was born a vampire or if he was a human once. Either way, Chanyeol would have to have either a family or a creator.

 

For so long, Chanyeol could care less regarding his origins as his main goal was to just keep surviving and not getting killed off.

It was not until he met Kyungsoo and read that book from the mansion’s library did he yearn to seek for the answers, and maybe answer his purpose of being.

 

 

 

Chanyeol remembered passing through a barren tundra of ice and snow, before reaching into vast forests that eventually led him to the mansion on the outskirts of a town.

Chanyeol went the same way he came from, tracing his previous journey to hopefully find the previous settlement he once lived in if it still did exist in the present day.

 

Chanyeol began his journey in the fall right after Kyungsoo’s departure.

With the money and documents Kyungsoo left behind for Chanyeol, he was able to take numerous form of transports to reach that place from trains to buses to cars.

Chanyeol traveled only by ground as that was what was familiar to him.

Along his journey, Chanyeol often took pictures on a camera Kyungsoo had given him. Chanyeol wrapped this camera up properly in his bag pack to protect it.

 

 

 

Chanyeol eventually reached the end of the vast forest that opened up to the tundra with a tall mountain range in the distance.

While deserted the last time he was there, a small town had been built there with people living in it.

It was almost winter when Chanyeol reached there but it was colder out on the tundra. Chanyeol was able to recognize the same barren, icy plains now that he was there again.

 

But due to the change in the political landscape over the time Chanyeol was in hibernation, he was unable to pass through into the tundra and over the mountains because it was now part of a different and hostile country.

While that would have mattered if he was a human, Chanyeol was not.

  
Despite people from the small town at the edge of the tundra telling him that it was a dangerous journey, Chanyeol left one night and crossed the tundra by feet to reach the mountains.

It didn’t matter to him. Chanyeol couldn’t feel the cold, he didn’t need to feed for another year and he was adept at avoiding humans from his hundreds of years of experience doing so.

 

 

The further Chanyeol traveled, the more he began recognizing his surroundings and the way back to where he had come from.

The closer he got, the more hopeful Chanyeol got that he would actually be able to answer the questions regarding his origins and existence.

Chanyeol wasn’t even sure why he cared to know about it only now.

 

 

Chanyeol was hardly alone during his journey across the cold vicious landscape.

Sometimes, he’d come across a mountain goat herder who would be at first surprised to see Chanyeol there before offering him something to eat.

Chanyeol would always politely decline the food but then ask for pictures, most of the time they would happily oblige.

Then, Chanyeol would continue on his journey and leave them puzzled as to how someone would be so far up there alone in such harsh conditions.

At other times, Chanyeol would stumble upon an eagle’s nest with eggs in it among the rocks. Chanyeol would take pictures of these too, which he intended to share with Kyungsoo later on once they could meet each other again.

 

When Chanyeol reached the top ridge of the mountains, from where he could see the land of the two countries that bordered on either side of it; Chanyeol could only think of Kyungsoo and of how his human friend was doing.

Chanyeol had so many pictures and so many things to tell Kyungsoo already, even though he had just barely begun his journey.

Chanyeol knew he had to find his answers so he could leave his old life behind before he could return to Kyungsoo.

 

 

 

 

The next time Kyungsoo heard from Chanyeol again, it was early December; three-and-a-half months since they had last seen each other and almost a month since they last heard from each other.

Kyungsoo’s final exams were approaching, which he had to go through before the two weeks year-end break holiday.

Kyungsoo’s parents, out of obligation, had bought him tickets to return home for the year-end break, but Kyungsoo wasn’t really eager to go home.

Kyungsoo’s friends had offered him to spend the holidays with them. Kyungsoo was delighted at the offer but he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to spend time with Chanyeol in that case.

Kyungsoo had to decline his friend’s invitation by lying that he had other matters to attend to at that time.

Kyungsoo couldn’t tell them yet that he was actually best friends and in love with a vampire.

 

 

By then, Chanyeol had just arrived in the second closest city to the mountains on the other side from where he had come from.

It had taken him weeks, almost a month, of traveling just by foot through the tundra, up the mountains, and down the mountains again to get over the other side.

Then, Chanyeol had to travel a bit further to several cities near it to find the one which he used to live in.

It had taken a long time because Chanyeol had to travel by foot and only at night because he was afraid of being discovered.

 

 

When Chanyeol did find the city he used to live in, he found himself oddly calm but not yet feeling rather fulfilled.

It had changed so much by then, leaving it almost unrecognizable except for a few key buildings and locations that remained from the days of the old.

The house that Chanyeol used to live in no longer existed, and its place was a taller newer building with several families living in it.

Every human in the city that Chanyeol used to know was long dead and gone. There was no one here now that knew who he was, no one to know that he was already ousted as a vampire and hunted until he was forced to leave.

While the city had held significance in the past, it was just another city now like the many that Chanyeol had been through over the course of his journey.

More importantly, this wasn’t the place that Chanyeol wanted to visit the most.

 

Chanyeol may have lived there in the past but he was more interested in going to the place from his earliest memory; of the one memory, he would never forget.

Chanyeol knew that the odds of having the questions regarding his origins answered was unlikely, he was still convinced that he would at least feel fulfilled once he found the place from his earliest memory.

 

 

But before Chanyeol ventured even further to set out to the place from his earliest memory, he stopped for a while at that city he used to live in.

After traveling through the mountains and forests for weeks, both the battery in the phone and camera were long dead and needing recharging.

During his short stop at the city, Chanyeol was able to contact Kyungsoo again. It was the first time in weeks that they were able to hear of each other in again.

Chanyeol replied the e-mails and quickly uploaded the pictures to send them to Kyungsoo who was still away in boarding school, busy studying for his finals.

 

 

 

 

Kyungsoo received the email notifications from Chanyeol while he was in class. Once the class ended, Kyungsoo almost ran back to his dormitory room to read the message and see the pictures on his computer, before his roommates returned from their class.

Kyungsoo was smiling ear to ear to hear that Chanyeol had been doing well and that he was almost at the end of his journey.

 

Kyungsoo smiled at the picture of Chanyeol with the random goat herder on the mountains. Then he laughed at the picture where Chanyeol was almost attacked by the mountain eagles for getting too close to their nest.

And finally, Kyungsoo felt like crying in happiness at the picture Chanyeol took of himself standing on the peak of the snowy mountains with the vast expanse of the region behind him.

Kyungsoo was happy that Chanyeol was finally out there in the world he had loved but been so scared to be in. If Chanyeol was happy, then so was Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo was only one person out of the many but he tried his best to be the change that Chanyeol wanted to see in the world; that vampires and humans could actually live alongside each other in harmony.

 

 

Before Chanyeol continued his journey again, he made sure to call Kyungsoo the night before he left.

Kyungsoo had quietly snuck out of his dormitory room without waking up his roommates, so he could go out to the rooftop to answer Chanyeol’s call.

It was also cold where Kyungsoo was and he only had hurriedly thrown on the nearest coat he could find before going out and answering the call.

 

Kyungsoo’s legs were already tired from running to the rooftop and climbing the steps to get up there. The moment he arrived on the rooftop, Kyungsoo plopped down on the cold stone floor under the bare night sky.

It was dark enough on the rooftop to be secluded but also bright enough that Kyungsoo wasn’t getting around blind.

 

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo almost cooed the moment he heard Chanyeol’s voice over the phone for the first time in so long.

“Hi, Kyungsoo. How is school?” Chanyeol asked, smiling to himself as he stood on the balcony of his hotel room overlooking the city that he used to call home.

“It’s good, Chanyeol. I can’t wait for my finals to be over with,” Kyungsoo sighed, craning his neck up to look at the starry sky above him on the rooftop.

“So did you decide to go home for the holidays?” Chanyeol asked, placing a hand on the railings of the balcony he stood on.

“Nope,” Kyungsoo quickly replied, “I’ll spend the first week of the break here at the school, then I’ll go visit my friends for the other week. I’d rather be anywhere but back home.”

“You used to want to not leave the mansion at all,” Chanyeol chuckled at the thought.

“Yeah, cause you were there,” Kyungsoo stated, rolling his eyes and sort of feeling that Chanyeol would know he was doing that from hundreds of miles away. Kyungsoo then continued, “-there’s no reason for me to be there now if you’re not there.”

“So…you would go back if I was there?” Chanyeol asked, squeezing the balcony railings under his grip.

“Without question, of course,” Kyungsoo responded a pitch lower, “-I’m not sure where to go after the school year ends next summer though. I’ll be done with school then and I can’t stay here anymore. I thought of getting a job so I don’t have to go back home.” Kyungsoo grabbed the front of his coat to pull it closer to his person for warmth.

“Don’t you worry. I’ll be back before then so you can go home for a while until we decide where to go next. How about that?” Chanyeol suggested, smiling.

“Yes!” Kyungsoo jovially and almost excitedly replied, “We could go on a trip together too. I’ve never been anywhere and I’d like to see all the places with you.”

“Of course, Kyungsoo. We’ll go on a journey and see all the places you want to go to. We’ll see the world together,” Chanyeol promised, wanting to grant Kyungsoo’s every desire within his capability.

“I can’t wait,” Kyungsoo gleefully expressed, squealing on the cold, dark, lonely rooftop.

If Kyungsoo was happy, then so was Chanyeol.

 

 

 

Then, Chanyeol set off again on his journey to that place from his earliest memory.

Now that Chanyeol had returned to the places he used to be, his recollection and memory of the past were slowly coming back to him albeit only a small part of it.

It felt almost natural, like a migratory bird who journeyed year after year back and forth. 

The further Chanyeol traveled and the closer he got to his destination, the clearer things got and soon Chanyeol found himself trekking down the path so familiarly like the back of his hand.

It was and felt faster this time around. Travel was easier because he was in relatively peaceful lands which eased his traveling.

 

 

Chanyeol found himself on the tall white cliff by the sea and the shoreline, hundreds if not thousands of miles from where he started his journey.

This was it. This was the place from his earliest memory and hundreds of years had passed since then.

The cliff was more eroded and the shoreline was closer than it was from centuries ago, time evidently taking its course on everything.

 

Chanyeol only thought he would be fulfilled and satisfied when he reached that place again. But he wasn’t.

Everything had been going so fine and so well for so long. Some memories and clues of his past and of who he was, were slowly returning to him.

Chanyeol thought that the place would be the last piece of the puzzle to finally complete the entire piece.

But now that he was there, Chanyeol only felt that he had hit a wall and he had to learn to accept that some things would just be left unanswered.

Chanyeol still remembered some things but obviously not the important parts that would answer his questions. Being there didn’t seem to help either, contrary to what Chanyeol wanted to believe.

 

On the grassy surface of the cliff overlooking the foamy white and blue sea below, Chanyeol dropped to his knees and yelled in anguish at the top of his voice, where his voice was drowned out by the sea breeze and where no one would see nor hear him.

On that same cliff from his earliest memory, Chanyeol came to terms that he should have been moving forward and not backward.

Then, Chanyeol journeyed down a different way that would take him back to Kyungsoo.

 

 

 

 

By late December, finals were over and the year-end break had started. Kyungsoo would stay back in school for the first week as he had planned to.

There were a few students he knew who also chose to stay behind at school during the holidays like him, so Kyungsoo was never really left alone. For the meantime, Kyungsoo’s roommates were away, although he would be spending the last week of the break with them later on.

 

Alone in his dormitory room, Kyungsoo was writing out some notes for next semester on his desk when he heard tapping on the glass panes of the windows.

Kyungsoo ignored at it first, believing it to be the branches of the overgrown tree outside his window that was blowing in the snow since that was usually the case.

 

Nonetheless, the tapping persisted and sounded rather rhythmically and uniform, as if there was a person out there responsible for it

Kyungsoo got up from his desk to check, with a suspicion that it was probably one of the lowerclassmen messing around with him, presumably bored from staying back for the holidays.

Then again, Kyungsoo’s room was on the third floor and he didn’t know how that was possible unless they were throwing rocks or snow at his window.

 

 

Kyungsoo pulled apart the curtains to see his good vampire friend, balancing on the branch of the tree dead in winter, waving happily back at him.

Kyungsoo didn’t have to think twice before opening the window to let Chanyeol in.

Chanyeol leaped through the window, ending up in Kyungsoo’s arm in a warm hug despite the cold air blowing in from the open window.

 

 

“What are you doing here? How did you find me?” Kyungsoo excitedly asked, jumpily, closing the window and pulling the curtains shut. Kyungsoo also made sure to lock the door to his room in case someone would walk in on them.

Chanyeol explained as he took off his coat, “It wasn’t hard to Google your school address, to be honest. I’m a vampire; we’re good at sneaking in so I could get past the gates easily. Once I was in, it wasn’t hard to track you down.”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming. You told me you were still on your travels!” Kyungsoo skipped, standing in front of Chanyeol and holding the vampire’s gloved hands in his bare ones.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Chanyeol smiled, “I didn’t want you to be alone during the holidays.”

 

Kyungsoo felt his tears well out of joy but he managed to stop that before it even happened. Kyungsoo hugged Chanyeol again, burying his head into Chanyeol’s shoulders as he genuinely felt important and cared for the first time in his life.

 

 

The school custodian came often to check up on the students who remained during the holidays. But it was easy for Chanyeol to slip out whenever the custodian came around during inspection, and for him to slip back in once the coast was clear.

Kyungsoo was breaking school rules for allowing “unauthorized persons” to be in his room or on the school grounds, but Kyungsoo was never one to strictly follow rules anyway.

 

They could only hang out in Kyungsoo’s room and they had to be quiet about it, but that wasn’t a problem for both Kyungsoo and Chanyeol either.

They were used to doing this back at the mansion when they wanted to spend time with each other.

 

 

 

On one evening, Kyungsoo was lying in his bed staring at the ceiling while Chanyeol was lying down on the bed of Kyungsoo’s roommate, just opposite of his.

The snow was falling softly outside, it was warm and cozy in the room, Kyungsoo already had his dinner and Chanyeol wouldn’t be hungry for another year or so.

 

Kyungsoo was fiddling around with the hem of his shirt when he gulped and finally prepared his nerves to ask a question.

While Kyungsoo was comfortable with telling Chanyeol anything and everything, he felt a bit different when it came to this particular set of questions that he had long thought about.

“Uh…Chanyeol?” Kyungsoo turned to lie down on his side to face Chanyeol on the other bed a few feet away from his.  

Chanyeol was still lying down on his back but he turned his head to the side to look at Kyungsoo, replying, “Yeah?”

“You once said that vampires can be created. How is it done? Can humans really become vampires?” Kyungsoo asked slowly.

“Hmm…” Chanyeol responded, thinking before answering, “A human would have to be bitten by a vampire and have the venom from the fangs enter their blood so they can become one.”

“So vampires are created whenever you drink blood from humans?” Kyungsoo further asked.

“No. It’s a conscious decision to release venom. When we drink from humans, we just drink and that’s it.” Chanyeol explained, putting an arm beneath his head.

“I see,” Kyungsoo nodded on the pillow, “-so any human can become a vampire?”

Chanyeol answered, “Not everyone, only dying and sick ones. We can’t turn perfectly healthy humans into vampires. Their body will usually resist the venom like a bad fever, and they only end up becoming very sick at worst. Venom will kill the already sick or hasten the death of a dying human. Then once their heart stops and they die as a human, they are immediately reborn as a vampire.”

 

 

“Oh…alright, I have more questions if you don’t mind,” Kyungsoo continued, now sitting up on the bed.

Chanyeol chuckled, crossing his legs as he remained lying down, “It’s alright. I’m used to that now. Ask away.”

“I remember you saying before that vampires either live in solitary or with their mates if they have one. I was wondering about mates and stuff like that,” Kyungsoo questioned, feeling a bit anxious at the response he would be hearing.

“It’s what you humans would call a married couple who have vowed to love, support and be at each other’s side even through hardships. We call them mates. It’s something like that,” Chanyeol explained.

“Oh, okay,” Kyungsoo acknowledged, sitting closer towards the edge of the bed before he continued asking, “So, can humans become a vampire’s mate?”

 

“You know, I did say that I don’t mind you asking me questions, but why are you asking these all of a sudden?” Chanyeol now asked, sitting up and moving towards the edge of the bed to face Kyungsoo opposite from him.

“There’s no reason,” Kyungsoo lied, turning his face away to avoid Chanyeol’s gaze.

Chanyeol got up from the bed and crossed over the gap between the two beds. Chanyeol stood in front of Kyungsoo and gently held Kyungsoo’s face between his hands, turning Kyungsoo’s head to look up at him.

Kyungsoo did not stop Chanyeol from doing so either.

“You’re afraid of something, I know.” Chanyeol implied, looking down into Kyungsoo’s dark-brown eyes.

Kyungsoo bit his own tongue and turned away, pushing Chanyeol’s hand away from his face.

 

Chanyeol let go when pushed away, standing with his hands at his sides. Kyungsoo remained at the edge of the bed with his head turned away from Chanyeol.

Chanyeol did not talk further, allowing Kyungsoo to say whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it.  

 

 

Kyungsoo fisted the bed sheets under his hand, hard enough until he could feel his nails digging into his palm even through the fabric.

Through gritted teeth, Kyungsoo painfully and almost tearfully forced the words through his mouth, “I’m afraid of dying…I’m afraid of being forgotten…and feeling like my existence would just be forgotten once I’m gone.”

“Kyungsoo…”, Chanyeol sighed deeply, placing a hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder.

“I know, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo continued, eyeing the hand on his shoulder as the object of his focus to avoid looking at Chanyeol, “I know it for a while now but I just didn’t want to admit it. First, my parents expected me to die when I was a child because of how sick I was. It was too difficult for them so they gave up on me. They moved on and had my sister so she could replace me when I died. But I’m not dead yet,” Kyungsoo spat at the last word.

Chanyeol withheld his silence to allow Kyungsoo to speak, softly grabbing onto Kyungsoo’s shoulder.

Kyungsoo then resumed, “My parents always thought it was a waste to spend anything on me because they thought I would be dead. But because I’m still alive, they don’t know what to do with me now.”

Kyungsoo shook off Chanyeol’s hand from his shoulder, now daring to look back up right into Chanyeol’s eyes.

“Second, I will die one day eventually. I don’t know when but it will come. I’m scared of it because there’s so much left to do that I haven’t done. I’m not satisfied yet. I’m not done living. You’ll live forever, Chanyeol. You’ll live many more years after I’m gone and I fear that the day will come when you forget about me,” Kyungsoo confessed, now breaking into tears that he had held back.

 

Hearing that, Chanyeol didn’t know what to further say. His only reaction was to sit on that edge of the bed too, to hug Kyungsoo and hold him tight.

Kyungsoo sobbed into his arms, and Chanyeol reassuringly held on to Kyungsoo, refusing to let go.

Chanyeol couldn’t deny Kyungsoo’s words and claims. He himself wouldn’t know how the future would turn out to be. He was a vampire, not a fortune teller.

Chanyeol wanted to remember every part and everything, wanted to have Kyungsoo with him for as long as he could, but he too was afraid as much as Kyungsoo was.

 

Chanyeol started to wonder how he was able to live alone for so long but was yet unable to think of a potential future without Kyungsoo in it.

Chanyeol held on to Kyungsoo for the rest of the evening, until the morning came.

Chanyeol was afraid of having to let go as much as Kyungsoo was afraid of being forgotten.

 

 


	6. For ever so long

 

While Chanyeol had held Kyungsoo through the entire night, he let go and backed away when morning came.

Chanyeol was cornered, both figuratively and literally in that warm dormitory room that belonged to Kyungsoo and his two other roommates who were away for the holidays.

Chanyeol had his back to a wall as Kyungsoo relentlessly plead the impossible to him. Chanyeol was afraid of someone who was yet so harmless to him.

 

“I can’t do that, Kyungsoo. I can’t,” Chanyeol continued to repeat.

“I’m scared, Chanyeol. I don’t want to die. Why aren’t you helping me?" Kyungsoo begged.

“It’s a curse, Kyungsoo. You should know by now how much I hate being one. I wish I could be a human if I had a say in it but that’s not possible. You have a choice Kyungsoo. I never had that,” Chanyeol justified, trying to pacify Kyungsoo in front of him.

“-but I thought we were friends. I love you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo cried, pushing away Chanyeol even further.

“We are and that’s why I cannot do this to you. I cannot put another person through the same living hell I had to go to. Especially not when you’re this young. We can still be together even though you’re human. That won’t stop us,” Chanyeol tried to explain.

 

 

Kyungsoo was however too distraught to think rationally and of the truth that Chanyeol spoke. Kyungsoo was too overcome with emotions to think of the bigger picture.

Kyungsoo rejected Chanyeol’s attempt at consoling him, distancing himself even further from his best friend.

“At this rate, you are just letting me die, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo accused, “You are just letting me be forgotten, letting my existence be for nothing.”

“Kyungsoo-,” Chanyeol tried to say, tried to reach out a caring hand towards Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo slapped away Chanyeol’s hand, hissing, “Don’t touch me. I thought friends helped each other but you are just damning me for the inevitable. I was foolish to think that you’d actually care and would help me.”

“You don’t understand, Kyungsoo. I do want to help you very much. I care about you. I just-,” Chanyeol tried to clarify, only to stop himself halfway and realize that Kyungsoo really wasn’t going to listen to him at that time.

 

Kyungsoo was inconsolable and Chanyeol could understand how scared anyone would be at their imminent deaths. He just didn’t understand why Kyungsoo was so worried about it now when it had never been a topic of their discussion prior to this.

Kyungsoo ignored Chanyeol for the rest of the day, obviously bitter and resentful towards Chanyeol’s refusal to make him a vampire.

Chanyeol was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to stay to make sure that Kyungsoo was alright but he also felt that his stay was not as welcome anymore.

 

 

 

Chanyeol’s vampire instinct reacted whenever he felt unwelcomed; which was to flee and run away. Chanyeol never wanted to leave all the places he wanted to leave; he just had to for his own safety and his own survival.

Chanyeol never understood that part. He didn’t fancy his existence very much and wished that there was a way for him to die, but yet he found himself obeying the instincts that kept him alive for longer.

Maybe this was the curse of being a vampire, and knowing that, Chanyeol knew that he could not put Kyungsoo through the same suffering.

Now, Chanyeol only wished and hoped that Kyungsoo would eventually understand that too.

 

 

Chanyeol left on a snowy night, leaving behind a note to Kyungsoo on the nightstand that he would be continuing his travels for a bit more and that he would return to the mansion in the summer to fetch Kyungsoo once school was over.

Then, Chanyeol wanted to fulfill his promise to bring Kyungsoo around the world, to see and go to the places he never got to go to.

Chanyeol wanted to give Kyungsoo a life that he was satisfied with. A life with no regrets left behind, where he would be smiling on his deathbed, old and accomplished.

 

 

 

 

 

Class resumed around the second week of January.

Kyungsoo and Chanyeol still kept in contact, although sporadically since Chanyeol was probably in some forest in an isolated area out of communication range. And Kyungsoo was too busy with studies during his final semester so he could finally graduate from high school, albeit a year late.

Neither Kyungsoo nor Chanyeol brought up their argument, both of them pretending it never happened.

 

Chanyeol wanted to think that Kyungsoo was beginning to understand his viewpoint. When in reality, Kyungsoo had actually given up and accepted his inevitable death.

Kyungsoo didn’t want to live forever, didn’t want to become a vampire or whatever that was associated with it. He only saw it as a means to an escape out of a turmoil he had no control over.

Kyungsoo just didn’t want to die too young with so many things left unfinished. Kyungsoo didn’t want to live a wasted life and he had turned to Chanyeol for help.

Only, Chanyeol also turned him down.

Kyungsoo thought that he maybe should have been clearer to Chanyeol about his illness, about how it was coming back and about how his time left alive was very limited.

But Kyungsoo couldn’t also put Chanyeol through the burden of knowing that he was dying.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo tried his best to hide his relapsing illness from his family, teachers, classmates and even Chanyeol.

He was a legal adult now so he had the authority to decide that no one should be informed of the diagnosis.

Kyungsoo took his medication and snuck out of school for regular doctor visits, hoping that these pills would extend his life for a bit longer.

 

 

But by March, Kyungsoo was throwing up and fainting in class in front of his teacher and classmates.

The first few times it happened, everyone only thought that Kyungsoo was just sick with a fever or a cold.

The more times it reoccurred, everyone became concerned that Kyungsoo was sick with something more severe and life-threatening.

Kyungsoo’s friends were concerned and gently asked him what was wrong. Kyungsoo only smiled and assured everyone he was alright, that he would be fine.

Kyungsoo persevered. He wanted to graduate high school, wanted to complete something he started and wanted to accomplish at least one thing before he died.

 

 

By April, even the doctors were shaking their heads and looking worried for Kyungsoo.

The doctors told Kyungsoo that the congenital heart defect he was born with was deteriorating even further. They told Kyungsoo that more invasive procedures had to be done to save his life. They also told Kyungsoo that he would have to be taken out of school for it to be done.

After he was told that, Kyungsoo stopped visiting the doctors and did not return for his follow-up treatments.

 

 As a child, in a time where Kyungsoo’s parents had not given up on him, they had him undergo numerous corrective heart surgeries and treatments so he could live longer and healthier.

Eventually, they became tired at constantly living in fear of their son dying at any time, and they tuned out Kyungsoo from their emotions and their capacity to care.

It was easier for them this way. A human could only care so much, after all.

 

 

 

By May, Kyungsoo was too weak to even get himself out of bed in the morning. One morning, Kyungsoo simply couldn’t get himself out of bed at all.

Out of concern, Kyungsoo’s roommates alerted the teachers and counselors about this, despite his efforts to keep his illness a secret.

The next thing Kyungsoo knew, his bags and things were being packed away and he was pushed on a wheelchair with several nurses to assist him on a flight home.

 

At the back of his head, Kyungsoo was still hoping that this was just temporary and he would be back in school in a few days.

But when Kyungsoo was greeted at the airport by an ambulance already on the tarmac with flashing lights and a blaring siren, then did he realize that he probably wouldn’t be coming back at all.

Oddly, Kyungsoo felt rather calm and placid at the thought. Maybe it was the number of drugs in his bloodstream, maybe it was the acceptance of his mortality.

 

 

 

Kyungsoo was in the hospital for a while where he was passed out for almost the entire days he was there because of the medication.

Kyungsoo heard light chattering and talking from people around him, which he recognized to be that of his mother, father, older brother and younger sister.

Kyungsoo could only see blurry, fuzzy faces but he was able to recognize who they were.

 

Kyungsoo was allowed to have his phone and he kept texting Chanyeol back and forth without any hint or clue as to what was really going on.  

Chanyeol wished Kyungsoo luck for his exams that he wouldn’t be able to sit for. Kyungsoo replied with thanks and a smiley face.

 

 

 

In early June, Kyungsoo’s friends and teachers from school came to visit him. They brought his graduation cap, robe, and scroll together with them. They also bought flowers and a graduation teddy bear for Kyungsoo.

The teacher told Kyungsoo that he had graduated high school like all his classmates, and the hospital allowed Kyungsoo’s friends to throw a small quiet party for him in the hospital room.

 

Then, slowly, they broke the news that Kyungsoo didn’t have much time left to live. Kyungsoo smiled when he was informed of this, while everyone even his family cried.

He was tranquil, ready and accepting of his death this time.

 

 

Kyungsoo signed a “Do not resuscitate” order a week after that and requested to be moved out of the hospital for end-of-life care back home at the mansion.

Kyungsoo didn’t mind staying at the hospital but he was worried that Chanyeol wouldn’t be able to find him.

Chanyeol would be returning in a few weeks time and Kyungsoo wanted to be at the mansion, to greet him home like they had promised each other the year before.

 

 

Kyungsoo’s room was set up as a temporary ward for himself where he had several nurses to take care of him around the clock.

Kyungsoo’s parents stopped going to work for a while and his older brother returned from college to be around Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo knew they loved him. They just weren’t strong enough to deal with his lifelong illness. It was too difficult for them, and Kyungsoo didn’t blame them for it.

 

 

 

 

On the evening that Chanyeol was to come home, Kyungsoo requested that the nurse leave him alone in his room for the night.

On a rainy early summer night, Chanyeol climbed into Kyungsoo’s window only to find his best human friend on his deathbed.

Least to say, Chanyeol was shocked.

 

Chanyeol ran to Kyungsoo’s bedside, dropping to his knees and grabbing Kyungsoo’s frail hand.

“Kyungsoo, why didn’t you tell me?” Chanyeol choked, crying.

Kyungsoo chuckled weakly, holding onto a vampire’s hand that was warmer than his own, “I didn’t know vampires could cry until today.”

“Why did you hide this from me? Why didn’t you say so?” Chanyeol reiterated, his voice shaking.

“I don’t know, Chanyeol. I don’t really know why I did the things I did anymore,” Kyungsoo coughed before allowing himself to continue, “-I just know that I didn’t want you to worry about me. You were so happy with your travels and I didn’t want to ruin that.”

Chanyeol’s already dead heart almost jumped at hearing Kyungsoo cough in his already weak state, as he fastened his grip on Kyungsoo’s hand not wanting to let go anytime soon, “-but you are more important than that. I couldn’t care shit about tracing my origins if I knew you were this sick.”

Kyungsoo chuckled again, weaker than ever, “I like the way you speak now.”

This time, Chanyeol sobbed, pressing Kyungsoo’s cold hand to his face as he repeated the words, “I’m so sorry, Kyungsoo.”

“Don’t be,” Kyungsoo assured, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you have made this life of mine even more worthwhile. I can go now without regrets thanks to you. You have given me the best year of my life.”

“Not yet, Kyungsoo. Not yet. We were going to see the world together, remember?” Chanyeol solemnly reminded.

“Oh, about that, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to go with you now. I’m sorry for breaking the promise. I really wanted to but it doesn’t seem to be happening now,” Kyungsoo apologized, calm and collected.

Chanyeol only cried harder, still pressing Kyungsoo’s hand to his face, staining the frail hand with his tears, “It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m so sorry, Kyungsoo.”

“It’s alright, Chanyeol. You were the best I could ever ask for,” Kyungsoo reminded, smiling.

“I’ll do anything for you. Just tell me what it is,” Chanyeol brought up in the midst of his tears, hoping to hear that one answer from Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo paused to think for a moment before replying, “I do have something. I want you to remember me, please. Don’t forget about me for as long as you can. At least I would be able to live on in your memories.”

That was not the response Chanyeol was looking for but who was he to refuse his dying friend’s final wish.

Chanyeol nodded and promised to remember Kyungsoo for as long as he lived. And he meant it.

 

Chanyeol kept Kyungsoo company throughout the entire night, never letting go of the hand in his own. Chanyeol patiently and eagerly answered all of Kyungsoo’s questions until the break of dawn the following morning.

Chanyeol told Kyungsoo about the attic he had been hiding in, how he used to sneak down to Kyungsoo’s room and of how he thought of Kyungsoo initially.

Chanyeol told Kyungsoo about all the places he had traveled to, of all the sights he saw, of his visit to that place from his earliest memory, and especially of how he thought of Kyungsoo all along the way. How he had wanted to give up after not remembering anything more and of how he only kept moving forward because of the promise to return to Kyungsoo.

 

 

Chanyeol talked on and on, telling tales of old and of new.

Kyungsoo smiled, laughed and reacted well to Chanyeol’s stories after all of the questions he wanted to ask were answered.

Kyungsoo then fell asleep sometime when the sun had just begun to rise, unconsciously letting go of Chanyeol’s hand that he held all night long.

 

While Kyungsoo was asleep, Chanyeol approached him even closer than he had ever been, wanting to be close to each other for one last time as a parting gift to the human he loved.

 

 

 

Then, Chanyeol heard the scuffling of feet and the light chatter of people outside the room, so he left the room and snuck out through the window.

But Chanyeol remained on the roof outside, where he was unseen, so he could know what was going on inside Kyungsoo’s room.

 

The nurse, followed by Kyungsoo’s mother entered the room. The nurse seemed slightly panicked at first as she inspected Kyungsoo’s vitals.

Kyungsoo’s mother was frozen in place, holding a hand to her mouth.

Then, after a few minutes, the nurse turned around and with a head hung low she announced that Kyungsoo had died peacefully in his sleep.

Kyungsoo’s mother dropped to the chair closest to her and began to wail, as it began to pour rain again outside during the yearly monsoon season. Soon, Kyungsoo’s entire family was gathered in the room, each of them crying and grieving his passing.

 

Chanyeol too heard this and hugged himself to console his own grief, sitting atop the roof tiles under the downpour of cold summer rain.

Like Kyungsoo’s mother, Chanyeol too wailed out of loss, except no one was there to hear him.

Chanyeol was alone again now like he always had been for the past hundreds of years.

 

 

 

Over the next few days, many different people in many types of cars drove up to the mansion to visit Kyungsoo’s family and pay respects for him during the wake.

Everyone wore black and so did Chanyeol, even though he was hidden away in the attic for the entire time.

Chanyeol couldn’t come to pay respects during the wake as Kyungsoo’s body was watched over by his friends and family, constantly in a vigil.

 

Chanyeol remained in his attic, lying on his side as he was reminded of what he had done until the right time came.

Maybe he would go back into hibernation, maybe he would run away again or maybe he’d keep moving forward like Kyungsoo always wanted him to.

 

 

 

On the fourth day after Kyungsoo’s death, the funeral was held at the graveyard and the mansion was empty for once since then.

Left alone in the mansion again, Chanyeol finally left the attic and went to all the places he used to spend time with Kyungsoo at.

 

Chanyeol traced his fingers on the couch where they used to sit on while playing games or watching movies. Chanyeol brushed his hands on all the books that they used to read together.

Chanyeol ran his hands on the walls of the room that they used to be in. Chanyeol glided his hands along the sloping railing of the stairs that led to the mansion’s first floor, as he descended down the stairs.

Chanyeol had picked up an object along the way. He would need this later on, but for now, he would just hold on to it tight and close.

Chanyeol cried no more. There was no use for it anymore. His gaze was soft, remorseful and quiet as he recalled the memories and the precious time he used to spend with Kyungsoo in the many walls of that mansion.

 

 

When Chanyeol did arrive at the bottom of the stairs, he came across the grand piano near the stairs.

Chanyeol fondly remembered the memory of him teaching Kyungsoo how to play it, how to play the piece he was proud to remember.

In his head, he could hear Kyungsoo nagging at him to teach him how to play the piano. How Kyungsoo worried that he wouldn’t be able to do well in music lessons if he didn’t learn it now.

Chanyeol placed the object somewhere close to him. Then, Chanyeol lifted the piano lid and pulled back the stool, sitting down on it as he straightened his posture, positioned his hands on the first keys and his feet on the pedals.

 

Chanyeol closed his eyes and played the tune again from just muscle memory, as all the memories of him and Kyungsoo flashed in front of him like a rewinding reel that was being played back.

Vampires were forgetful but on contrary, they would greatly remember whatever memories that were left with them.

It would be time soon. Chanyeol was just patiently waiting as he had waited for ever so long.

 

 

When Chanyeol heard the cars pulling up in front of the mansion again, returning from the funeral, only then did he begun to take his leave.

Chanyeol picked up the object and close the piano lid, pushing the piano stool back under the piano before leaving the mansion through the back door.

Like Kyungsoo who had left the mansion forever in a hearse in a casket, Chanyeol was also leaving the mansion to never return again.

 

 

 

Dressed in the clothes he would have worn to Kyungsoo’s funeral if he were allowed to go, Chanyeol walked down the main roads with the object swung on his shoulders.

Chanyeol didn’t care at the numerous cars or people that passed him by, who were either indifferent, amused or curious as to what Chanyeol was doing walking around carrying that object.

Chanyeol was done of hiding, through with running away.

 

If Kyungsoo, a weak and frail human was brave enough to befriend a supposedly dangerous vampire, then who was he as the said vampire to be any less brave?

Kyungsoo died at the age of nineteen, not even a small fraction of the years that Chanyeol had lived. If Kyungsoo had been so courageous in those short years, then Chanyeol would have to do better than that.

 

 

 

Chanyeol arrived at the graveyard where Kyungsoo had just been buried several hours ago. The earth that buried him six feet deep was still new and fresh.

It had gotten dark by then and the graveyard was deserted of the living. Only the dead and the undead like Chanyeol remained.

 

Chanyeol swung the object he had been carrying all the way off from his shoulders, sticking it into the heap of fresh earth that covered Kyungsoo’s final resting place.

Then, Chanyeol began digging with the shovel all night until he hit the wooden casket, several feet below the ground in the newly dug grave.

 

It was no doubt disrespectful and of bad taste to dig out a recently deceased person, but this was how Chanyeol paid his respects.

Chanyeol threw the shovel up above ground once he had cleared off dirt and earth from the casket’s top.

Then, Chanyeol ripped open the nails securing the casket in place with his bare hands, so he could open the cover and reveal Kyungsoo’s body lying in rest, formally dressed in the suit and tie he was buried in.

 

 

“Sorry, I had to wait until everyone was gone. At least they didn’t cremate you, that would have been a hassle trying to revive a vampire who had been turned to ashes,” Chanyeol sighed, balancing himself on the edges of the casket as he looked down at Kyungsoo from between his legs.

“It’s fine, I slept the entire time,” Kyungsoo replied, looking back up at Chanyeol under the glow of the full moon in the sky above them.

Chanyeol smiled, chuckling, “A vampire won’t ever forget their first memory. You’ll remember this moment forever.”

“I’m sorry you had to do this, Chanyeol. I know I asked you to turn me into a vampire before but I changed my mind and I was fine with dying, to be honest. I didn’t want to guilt trip you into doing it. I didn’t mean it. I’m not complaining though,” Kyungsoo explained, as Chanyeol assisted him in climbing out the grave.

As Chanyeol was covering the grave back with earth, he turned to look back at Kyungsoo poking his new fangs, “It’s cool. We’ll have forever to think about it. So, where do you want to go first after this?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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